"I know he did. You might have given him a momentary rapture if you had loved him. But make him happy--not you! Not anybody, Barbara! How could you look at his face, and not see that he carried his unhappiness about with him? I verily believe that there was no place on the earth's surface where he could have been at peace. Underneath it--perhaps!" Barbara sighed, looking down at the stones. "You people with consciences blame yourselves for things foredoomed," said Scarlett. "Harding's destiny was written before you were born, my dear child. Besides," he added, in a lighter tone, "what would you do with the pair of us?" "That's true," she said, thoughtfully. "Take my word for it," he went on, "if you want to do any good you should give happiness to the people who are fit for it. You can brighten my life--oh, my darling, you don't know how much! But his--never! If you were an artist you might as well spend your best work in painting angels and roses on the walls of the family vault down here as try it." "Yes," said Barbara. Then, after a pause, she spoke with a kind of sob in her voice, "But if one had thrown in just a flower before the door was shut! I couldn't, you know, I hadn't anything to give him!" Scarlett, by way of answer, laid his hand on hers. When you come face to face with such an undoubted fact as the attraction a man's lonely suffering has for a woman, argument is useless. It is an ache for which self-devotion is the only relief. He perfectly understood the remorseful workings of Barbara's tender heart. "I couldn't do without you, my dear," he said. "Oh, Adrian!--no!" she exclaimed. "That day when I said good-bye to him, he fancied I was crying for him once, and even that was for you. I was just thinking, if it had been you sitting there!" "Foolish child! I'm not to be got rid of so easily." "Don't talk of it!" said Barbara. Her hand tightened on his arm, and she looked up at him, with a glance that said plainly that the sun would drop out of her sky if any mischance befell him. "Well," she said, after a minute, more in her ordinary voice, as if she were dismissing Reynold Harding from the conversation, "I'm glad you know. I wanted you to know, but of course I could not tell you." "It's wonderful with women," said Adrian, gliding easily into generalities, "the things they _don't_ think it necessary to tell us, taking it for granted that we know them, and we _can't_ know them and _don't_ know them to our dying day--and the things they _do_ think it necessary to tell us, with elaborate precautions and explanations--which we knew perfectly well from the first." "Oh, is that it?" Barbara replied, smartly. "Then I shall tell you everything, and you can be surprised or not as you please." "I sha'n't be much surprised," said Adrian, "unless, perhaps, you tell me something when you think you are not telling anything at all."