"Yes--it _was_!" replied Angus, clenching his right hand and bringing it down on his knee with emphasis; "whether they were goose wings or eagle wings didn't matter--the pricking of the budding quills was an _alive_ sensation! The mountains, the burns, the glens, all had something to say to me--or I thought they had--something new, vital and urgent. God Himself seemed to have some great command to impose upon me--and I was ready to hear and obey. I began to write--first verse--then prose--and by and by I got one or two things accepted here and there--not very much, but still enough to fire me to further endeavours. Then one summer, when I was taking a holiday at a little village near Loch Lomond, I got the final dig of the spur of fate--I fell in love." Mary raised her eyes again and looked at him. A slow smile parted her lips. "And did the girl fall in love with you?" she asked. "For a time I believe she did,"--said Reay, and there was an under-tone of whimsical amusement in his voice as he spoke--"She was spending the summer in Scotland with her mother and father, and there wasn't anything for her to do. She didn't care for scenery very much--and I just came in as a sort of handy man to amuse her. She was a lovely creature in her teens,--I thought she was an angel--till--till I found her out." "And then?" queried Helmsley. "Oh well, then of course I was disillusioned. When I told her that I loved her more than anything else in the world, she laughed ever so sweetly, and said, 'I'm sure you do!' But when I asked her if she loved _me_, she laughed again, and said she didn't know what I was talking about--she didn't believe in love. 'What do you believe in?' I asked her. And she looked at me in the prettiest and most innocent way possible, and said quite calmly and slowly--'A rich marriage.' And my heart gave a great dunt in my side, for I knew it was all over. 'Then you won't marry _me_?'--I said--'for I'm only a poor journalist. But I mean to be famous some day!' 'Do you?' she said, and again that little laugh of hers rippled out like the tinkle of cold water--'Don't you think famous men are very tiresome? And they're always dreadfully poor!' Then I took hold of her hands, like the desperate fool I was, and kissed them, and said, 'Lucy, wait for me just a few years! Wait for me! You're so young'--for she was only seventeen, and still at school in Brighton somewhere--'You can afford to wait,--give me a chance!' And she looked down at the water--we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the song says--in quite a picturesque little attitude of reflection, and sighed ever so prettily, and said--'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and kind!--and I like you very much!--but I am going to marry a millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires." "Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley. "Yes. Lucy Sorrel."