"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about, and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price, and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--" And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by both arms. But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see, can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over it, were the birds. After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or three times before I spoke. "Yes," said I, "I think I understand. We have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,--one who needed and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?" And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. "You care for me--just me?" she breathed. "Just you," I answered, gravely. And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, quickly, she laughed. "That was very gentlemanly in you," she said; "but, of course, I understand. Let us part friends, then,--Robert. Even if--if you really cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor." "Too poor!" I scoffed,--and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; "too _poor_, Avis! I am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong--to the poor man's country, Avis,--or, in any event, to the country of those God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just occasionally, a pat of butter to season it." The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and unconquerable. So I moved more near to her.