“Always provided,” she said, “that you are not broke at the moment.  In which case Barbara will pay and tip.”

“I’ve had a funny adventure,” said Wilmot.  “I was dreadfully broke.  A man I hadn’t seen for years and years—­and only the once at that—­stopped me in the street, told me I was broke, and offered to lend me money.  Wilmot accepted, and is now plenty flush enough to blow to lunch, thank you!”

Barbara, reseated herself in the deep chair, and once more presented the soles of her shoes to the flames.  “Look here,” she said, “aren’t you, just among old friends, rather flitting your life away?  I don’t think it’s very pretty to borrow money from strangers, and to be always just getting into difficulties or just getting out of them.  Do you?”

“Well, you know,” said Wilmot earnestly, “I don’t.  When I don’t hate myself, I don’t like myself any too well.  But there’s something wrong with me.  Maybe I’m just lazy.  Maybe I lack an impulse.  Maybe I’d do better if any single solitary person in this world really gave a damn about me.”

His cheerful boyish face assumed a proper solemnity of expression, and a certain nobility.  At the moment he really thought that nobody in the world cared what became of him.

“Nobody,” said Barbara, “likes to back a flighty pony.  You yourself, for instance, are always putting money, your own or some one else’s, on horses that always run somewhere near form.  Of course you have excuses for yourself.”

“I?  None.”

“Oh, yes, you have.  You were brought up to be rich, and you were left poor, and a man has to live and even secure for himself the luxuries to which he has been accustomed.  Haven’t you ever excused yourself to yourself something like that?”

Wilmot admitted that he had, and went further.  “You can’t knock livings out of a tree with a stick like ripe apples,” he said.  “You’ve either got to use your wits or begin at the bottom and work up.  And it seems to me that I’d rather be a little bit tarnished than toil away the best years of my life the way some men I know are doing.”

“Yes,” said Barbara, “but why not go somewhere where the world is younger, and there are real chances to be a man, and real opportunities to make money in real ways?  I don’t blame you for living on your wits.  I blame you for gambling and never getting anywhere and not caring.”

“Not caring?  And this from you?”

She changed color under his steady eyes.

“You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of honor I’ll settle to something above-board and make it hum.  Look here now!  How about it?  Who’s been so faithful to the one girl for so long?  Who understands her so well?  Who’d enjoy dying for her so much?”

“Good old Wilmot,” she said gently and gave him her hand.  He kissed it and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness:  “I mustn’t ever marry anybody.  I’ve learned to know myself too well.  And I’ve no constancy, and I don’t trust myself.”