“No, I shouldn’t have taken the gold. I should have come up with you, and told you that it still awaited you in the bank, and now I beg your permission to walk down the street with you, because if any one were looking at us from these windows, and saw us pursued by a bareheaded man with a revolver, they will now, on looking out again, learn that it is all right, and may even come to regard the revolver and the hatless one as an optical delusion.” Again the girl laughed. “I am quite unknown in Bar Harbor, having fewer acquaintances than even a stranger like yourself, therefore so far as I am concerned it does not in the least matter whether any one saw us or not. We shall walk together, then, as far as the spot where the cashier overtook us, and this will give me an opportunity of explaining, if not of excusing, my leaving the money on the counter. I am sure my conduct must have appeared inexplicable both to you and the cashier, although, of course, you would be too polite to say so.” “I assure you, Miss Amhurst--” “I know what you would say,” she interrupted, with a vivacity which had not heretofore characterized her, “but, you see, the distance to the corner is short, and, as I am in a hurry, if you don’t wish my story to be continued in our next--” “Ah, if there is to be a next--” murmured the young man so fervently that it was now the turn of color to redden her cheeks. “I am talking heedlessly,” she said quickly. “What I want to say is this: I have never had much money. Quite recently I inherited what had been accumulated by a relative whom I never knew. It seemed so incredible, so strange--well, it seems incredible and strange yet--and I have been expecting to wake and find it all a dream. Indeed, when you overtook me at this spot where we now stand, I feared you had come to tell me it was a mistake; to hurl me from the clouds to the hard earth again.” “But it was just the reverse of that,” he cried eagerly. “Just the reverse, remember. I came to confirm your dream, and you received from my hand the first of your fortune.” “Yes,” she admitted, her eyes fixed on the sidewalk. “I see how it was,” he continued enthusiastically. “I suppose you had never drawn a check before.” “Never,” she conceded. “And this was merely a test. You set up your dream against the hard common sense of a bank, which has no dreams. You were to transform your vision into the actual, or find it vanish. When the commonplace cashier passed forth the coin, their jingle said to you, ‘The supposed phantasy is real,’ but the gold pieces themselves at that supreme moment meant no more to you than so many worthless counters, so you turned your back upon them.”