"Well, suppose you had got tired of waiting, and had come across some better fellow. There was time enough, and it would have served me right." "I don't know about serving you right, but there wouldn't have been time for me to get tired of waiting," said Barbara, and added more softly, "not if it had been all my life." "Listen to that!" Adrian answered, leaning backward, with his elbows on the gate. "All her life--for _me_!" His quick fancy sketched that life: first the passionate eagerness, throbbing, hoping, trusting, despairing; then submission to the inevitable, the gradual extinction of expectation as time went on; and finally the dimness and placidity of old age, satisfied to worship a pathetic memory. Hardly love, rather love's ghost, that shadowy sentiment, cut off from the strong actual existence of men and women, and thinly nourished on recollections, and fragments of mild verse. Scarlett turned away, as from a book of dried flowers, to Barbara. "What did you think of me?" he said, still dwelling on the same thought. "Never one word!" "Well, I felt as if there were a word--at least, a kind of a word--once," she said. "I went with Louisa to the dentist last February--it was Valentine's Day--she wanted a tooth taken out. There were some books and papers lying about in the waiting-room. One of them was an old Christmas number, with something of yours in it. Do you remember?" "N--no," said Scarlett doubtfully. "Oh, don't say it wasn't yours! A little poem--it had your name at the end. There can't be _another_, surely," said Barbara, with a touch of resentment at the idea. "There were two illustrations, but I didn't care much for them; I didn't think they were good enough. I read the poem over and over. I did so hope I should recollect it all; but he was ready for Louisa before I had time to learn it properly, and our name was called. It was a very bad tooth, and Louisa had gas, you know. I was obliged to go. I am so slow at learning by heart. Louisa would have known it all in half the time; but I did wish I could have had just one minute more." "Tell me what it was," Adrian said. "_My love loves me_," Barbara began in a timid voice. "Oh--that! Yes, I remember now. The man who edits that magazine is a friend of mine, and he asked me for some little thing for his Christmas number. If I had thought you would have cared I could have sent it to you." Her eyes shone with grateful happiness. "But I didn't," said Adrian. "I didn't do anything. Well, go on, Barbara, tell me how much you remembered."