uld know better
than to do it."

He did not seem much troubled by the last statement. "We should have
had to talk things over," he said.

"No, talking wouldn't have been any good," she answered; "there is a
great distance between us."

He looked down at the space of red tiles that separated them. "That is
rather remediable," he observed.

"Do you think I am not in earnest?" she said. "I am. There is a real
barrier; besides all these things I have mentioned there is something
else that cuts me off. I have a debt to pay you and until it is paid,
if I were your own cousin, I could not stand on the same platform."

"A debt?" he repeated the word in surprise. His young cousin's loan to
Captain Polkington had slipped his memory, and even if it had not, its
connection with the present would not have occurred to him. Julia had
been there, it is true, when the affair was talked of eighteen months
ago, and he himself had unofficially paid the money to end the matter,
but he never dreamed of connecting either her or himself with it now.
Still less would he have dreamed that she considered herself bound to
pay him what her father had borrowed from another.

"What debt?" he asked, thinking the word must be hyperbolical, and
meant to stand for something quite different, though he could not
imagine what.

"You have forgotten?" she said. "I thought you had; that only shows
the distance more plainly; you have one standard for yourself and
another for me."

"Tell me what it is and let us see if we cannot compound it."

But she shook her head. "It can't be compounded," she said; "you will
know when I pay it."

"And when will that be?"

"Ten years, twenty perhaps, I don't know. I thought once or twice
before I could pay it--with the blue daffodil once, and once when I
first got the cottage and things--I thought, to be sure, I could do
it; it seemed a Heaven-sent way. But"--with a little glint of
self-derision--"Heaven knows better than to send those sort of easy
ways to the Polkingtons; they are ill-conditioned beasts who only
behave when they are properly laden by fate, and not often then. Now
you know all about it, so won't you say good-bye and go?"

"I don't know about it and, what is more, I don't care. I am not going
to let this unknown trifle, this scruple--"

Just then there came the sound of voices outside; Mr. Gillat and
Captain Polkington unwarily coming back before the coast was clear.

"Yes," Johnny was sayin