Barbara paused a moment, looking back to the open page on the dentist's green table-cloth. As she spoke she could see poor Louisa, awaiting her summons with a resigned and swollen face, an old gentleman examining a picture in the _Illustrated London News_ through his eyeglass, and a lady apprehensively turning the pages of the dentist's pamphlet, _On Diseases of the Teeth and Gums_. Outside, the rain was streaming down the window panes. Barbara recalled all this with Adrian's verses. "_My love loves me. Then wherefore care For rain or shine, for foul or fair? My love loves me. My daylight hours are golden wine, And all the happy stars are mine, My love loves me!_" "_Love flies away_," she began more doubtfully, and looked at Adrian, who took it up. "_Love flies away, and summer mirth Lies cold and grey upon the earth, Love flies away, The sun has set, no more to rise, And far, beneath the shrouded sides, Love flies away._" "Yes!" cried Barbara, "that's it! I had forgotten those last lines--how stupid of me!" "Not at all," said Adrian. "You remembered all that concerned you, the rest was quite superfluous." "Oh, but how I did try to remember the end!" she continued pensively. "It haunted me. If I had only had a minute more! But all the same I felt as if I had had something of a message from you that day. It was my valentine, wasn't it?" Scarlett's eyes, with a look half whimsical, half touched with tender melancholy, met hers. "I _wish_ we were worth a little more--my poems and I!" said he. "I wish I were a hero, and had written an epic. Yes, by Jove! an epic in twelve books." "Oh, not for me!" cried Barbara. CHAPTER IX. A VERSE OF AN OLD SONG. "Adrian!" The name was uttered with just a hint of hesitating appeal. "At your service," Scarlett answered promptly. He had a bit of paper before him, and was pencilling an initial letter to be embroidered on Barbara's handkerchiefs. "Adrian, did you hear that Mr. Harding--you know whom I mean--was ill?" "Yes, I did hear something about it." He put his head on one side and looked critically at his work. "Is it anything serious?" "Yes," said Barbara. "I'm afraid it is." "Poor fellow! I'm very sorry. How the days do shorten, don't they?" "Yes," said Barbara again. "They spoke as if he were going to--die." "Really? I'm sorry for that. It is strange," Adrian continued, putting in a stroke very delicately, "but one of the Wilton girls used always to say he looked like it. I think it was Molly." Barbara sighed but did not speak. "Let's see," said Adrian, "he left the Robinsons--what happened? Didn't the boy get drowned?" "No!" scornfully, "he fell into the water, but somebody fished him out." "Not Harding?" "No, somebody else. Mr. Harding went in, but he couldn't swim, and he didn't reach Guy. But he got a chill--it seems that was the beginning of it all."