"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