With her fingers on the handle, Rue paused, and looked round again. “I wouldn’t have said so much, even now,” she faltered, “if it weren’t for this—that I feel you’re the one man I’ve ever met in my life to whom the question of my money was as dust in the balance. You speak the truth, and I know I can trust you. If ever you can say to me, ‘I love you better now, Rue, than I ever loved anyone,’ I am yours: then, take me! But till that day comes, if come it ever does, let us only be friends. Never speak to me again, for Heaven’s sake, never speak, as we have spoken this evening.” She opened the door and passed out, all tremulous. Will waited a moment, and then, with a throbbing heart, went slowly down the stairs. As he did so, something moist fell suddenly on his hand that grasped the bannister. To his immense surprise, he found it was a tear from his own eyelids—for he too was crying. Poet that he was, he felt more than half-inclined, while he stood there, hesitating, to rush after her as she went, and seize her in his strong arms, and cover her with warm kisses that very minute. For a poet is a man even more than the rest of us. But could he tell her with truth he had quite forgotten Linnet? Oh, no, no, no; Linnet’s image on his heart remained graven, even then, quite as deeply as ever. We men are built so. CHAPTER XXVII AULD LANG SYNE A week or two later, one bright spring afternoon, Will was strolling by himself down the sunny side of Bond Street. All the world was there—for the world was in town—and the pavements were crowded. But Will moved through the stream of well-dressed dawdlers, seeing and hearing little. In the midst of all that idle throng, his head was full of melodies; he was working up rhymes to ready-made tunes, undisturbed by the hubbub and din of London. Of a sudden, somebody stopped and stood straight in front of him. “Mr Deverill, I believe!” a tuneful voice said, brusquely. Will’s eyes returned at once from heaven to earth, and saw standing before them—a tall young man, of somewhat defiant aspect, dressed in the black frock coat and shiny silk hat of Metropolitan respectability.