Now after all Alan was very much a man, if a modest one, with all a man's instincts, and therefore there are appearances of the female face which even such as he could not entirely misinterpret.
"You--don't--mean," he said doubtfully, "you don't really mean----" and he stood hesitating before her.
"If you would put your question a little more clearly, Alan, I might be able to give you an answer," she replied, that quaint little smile of hers creeping to the corners of her mouth like sunshine through a mist of rain.
"You don't really mean," he went on, "that you care anything about me, like, like I have cared for you for years?"
"Oh! Alan," she said, laughing outright, "why in the name of goodness shouldn't I care about you? I didn't say that I do, mind, but why shouldn't I? What is the gulf between us?"
"The old one," he answered, "that between Dives and Lazarus--that between the rich and the poor."
"Alan," said Barbara, looking down, "I don't know what has come over me, but for some unexplained and inexplicable reason I am inclined to give Lazarus a lead--across that gulf, the first one, I mean, not the second!"
Like the glance which preceded it, this was a saying that even Alan could not misunderstand. He sat himself on the log beside her, while she, still looking down, watched him out of the corners of her eyes.
He went red, he went white, his heart beat very violently. Then he stretched out his big brown hand and took her small white one, and as this familiarity produced no remonstrance, let it fall, and passing his arm about her, drew her to him and embraced her, not once, but often, with such vigour that a squirrel which had been watching these proceedings from a neighbouring tree, bolted round it scandalized and was seen no more.
"I love you, I love you," he said huskily.
"So I gather," she answered in a feeble voice.
"Do you care for me?" he asked.
"It would seem that I must, Alan, otherwise I should scarcely--oh! you foolish Alan," and heedless of her Sunday hat, which never recovered from this encounter, but was kept as a holy relic, she let her head fall upon his shoulder and began to cry again, this time for very happiness.
He kissed her tears away, then as he could think of nothing else to say, asked her if she would marry him.
"It is the general sequel to this kind of thing, I believe," she answered; "or at any rate it ought to be. But if you want a direct answer--yes, I will, if my uncle will let me, which he won't, as you have quarrelled with him, or at any rate two years hence, when I am five and twenty and my own mistress; that is if we have anything to marry on, for one must eat. At present our worldly possessions seem to consist chiefly of a large store of mutual affection, a good stock of clothes and one Yellow God, which after what happened last night, I do not think you will get another chance of turning into cash."
"I must make money somehow," he said.
"Yes, Alan, but I am afraid it is not easy to do--honestly. Nobody wants people without capital whose only stock in trade is a brief but distinguished military career, and a large experience of African fever."
Alan groaned at this veracious but discouraging remark, and she went on quickly:
"I mean to spend another guinea upon my friend the lawyer at Kingswell. Perhaps he can raise the wind, by a post-obit, or something," she added vaguely, "I mean a post-uncle-obit."
"If he does, Barbara, I can't live on your money alone, it isn't right."
"Oh! don't you trouble about that, Alan. If once I can get hold of those dim thousands you will soon be able to make more, for unto him that hath shall be given. But at present they are very dim, and for all I know may be represented by stock in deceased companies. In short, the financial position is extraordinarily depressed, as they say in the Market Intelligence in /The Times/. But that's no reason why we should be depressed also."
"No, Barbara, for at any rate we have got each other."
