Gervase laughed aloud, but with a little discomfiture in his voice. “Just what my father said; and you will be as much disgusted perhaps as he was, when I say, Nothing. Why should I do anything. Listen to me, Madeline, before you condemn me. This doing something is a modern fad, just like all the others. There are hundreds of men who must work to live. Why should I get in their way, and take some one’s bread out of his mouth?” “Gervase! not one of them could take your place. Not one of them could do what you were wanted to do.” “That is just what my father said.” He gave vent to a short laugh, embarrassed and uneasy. “You ought to back me up, or what is to become of me? This makes it all the harder to tell you--of the future, as you said.” “Yes, Gervase.” She gave the hand that held hers a little pressure, a touch that meant much. “Well,” he cried, with a burst of wounded feeling, anxiety, doubt, disappointment, all in one, “that is just what gives it its sting. ‘You cannot marry’ he tells me, ‘on your boy’s allowance:’ which means that I am to have nothing more: that I have to offer you--nothing! not the kind of life that you have been living--nor luxury nor beauty, nor--anything we have thought of. But only a poor man’s pittance--a sort of starvation--a--nothing! nothing! and after all our dreams.” She gave his hand a little pressure again. “Don’t be extravagant,” she said. “Do you think I would hesitate--if----” “If what?” “If there was any need for it?” she said. And then again there was a pause. This time it was he who averted his head, gazing straight before him into the vacant air, while she looked at him anxiously. After a while he replied in a cold constrained tone,--“The need--exists in my own mind. I am very unfortunate not to be able to make you understand it. That takes all support from me. But it does not change me. There is need--in my eyes.” He paused again. “I have made a very bitter discovery already to-night, that my father is guided by other sentiments than love and generosity to his only child. That he wants a recompense--his pound of flesh.” “Oh, Gervase, don’t talk of it so!--is it not reasonable--his only child?” “Yes, his only child--that is what I thought. I believed he would respect the scruples he has himself had me trained to. I never thought it was an affair of bargaining between us. And now he has made it so, and, Madeline, you----” “Gervase!” she cried, in great trouble, “do you think I will forsake you because your father will not give you what you expected? Oh no, no! I would rather have you with nothing than anybody else with the whole world in his hand. Surely you know that well enough. What do I care for the luxury and all that? Why, you know I have often said there would be far more fun in being poorer, in doing things for ourselves, contriving and patching up like the people in books---- But one may have one’s opinion all the same.” “And that’s all against me,” he said.