thing came to me. I saw for a moment over the wall. Dear,
I am very sure that if I go back there will be times when I shall see
over the wall, and my heart will ache and the whole taste of life will
be like dust between my teeth."

She leaned towards him.

"It is your fault if I say this," she whispered. "It is you yourself
who have prepared the way. Why not make sure of riches? The world can
give so much to the rich. You can buy education, manners, taste.
Anything, surely, would be better than taking up the life of an
auctioneer's clerk once more? With riches you can at least get away
from the most oppressive forms of vulgarity."

"I wish I could believe it," he replied. "The poor man is, as a rule,
natural. The rich man has the taste of other things on his palate; he
has looked over the wrong wall, he apes what he sees in the wrong
garden."

"Not always," she pleaded. "Don't you believe that something will
remain of these splendid months of yours--some will power, some faint
impulse towards the choicer ways of life? Oh, it really must be so!"
she went on, more confidently. "I am sure of it. I think of you as you
are now, how carefully you control even your emotions, how sensitive you
always are in your speech, and I know that you could never revert
entirely to those other days. You may slip back, and slip back a long
way, but there would always be something to keep you from the depths."

Her eyes were glowing. Her fingers deliberately touched his for a
moment.

"It is wonderful to hope that it may be so," he sighed. "Even as I sit
here and remember that awful picnic party, I remember, too, that
something drew me a little away from the others to gaze into your garden
and at you. There was something, even then, which kept me from being
with them while I looked, and I know that at that moment, at the moment
I looked up and met your eyes, I know that there was no vulgar thought
in my heart."

"Dear," she said, "with every word you make me the more inclined to
persist. I honestly believe that father and Mr. Bomford are right. It
is your duty. You owe it to yourself to accept their offer."

He sat for several minutes without speech.

"If I could only make you understand!" he went on at last. "Somehow, I
feel as though it would be making almost a vulgar use of something which
is to me divine. These strange little things which Mr. Bomford would
have me barter for money, brought me out of the unclean world and showe