“Ah!  And did you dream that somebody called you—­and held you—­and wouldn’t let you go?”

“I never told you!” I cried.

“No need, Sophy.  It was to me you came back.”  Of a sudden his head drooped.  “And now I can’t marry you!”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I’m a beggar.”

Nicholas Jelnik a beggar couldn’t find lodgment in my brain.  I could only stare at him incredulously.

“I learned some time ago that things were not altogether right over yonder, but I hadn’t the ghost of an idea that my entire estate was involved; that while I’d been ’tramping’—­I’ll use Judge Gatchell’s word—­the men in whose hands I placed too much power had taken advantage of it.  A very common, every-day story, you see.

“Remains the fact that I’m stripped to the bone.  The estate’s wiped out.  And,” he added, with a grave smile, “I haven’t even discovered the mythical Hynds jewels.  Now you see, Sophy, why I can’t marry you.”

“I see why you think you can’t.”

He flushed to the roots of his black hair.  Hynds-Jelnik pride rose in arms.

“I should cut rather a sorry figure marrying the owner of Hynds House, in the present circumstances,” he said curtly.  “You will remember that The Author called me an adventurer!  I have told you I have nothing.”

“Aren’t you forgetting your profession?”

“No.  But I neglected that, too, Sophy.  The Wanderlust had me in its grip.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“I shall leave here, put in some months of hard study, and then fight my way upward.  My father was the greatest alienist of his generation, and I was trained under his eye.  But in the meantime—­”

“Yes.  In the meantime, what of me?” I asked.

He winced as if he had been struck.  “You are free,” he said, in a whisper.

“I am free to be free, and you’re free to set me free.  You never asked me to marry you, in the first place,” I agreed quietly.

Stupefaction seized him.  He put his hands to his head.

“Why, Sophy!  Why, Sophy!” he stammered.  Of a sudden he straightened his shoulders, and stood erect:  “Miss Smith,” he said, with grave politeness, “will you do me the honor to marry me?” and he waited.

“It is rather a belated request, Mr. Jelnik.  Besides, you haven’t told me why you want to marry me,” said I, sedately.

“You are well aware that I love you, Sophy.  And I think you care for me in return.  Why did you turn that coin when it meant ‘Go,’ and bid me, instead, ‘Stay’?  Was it because you cared, Sophy?”

“Yes, Mr. Jelnik:  it was because I cared.  I cared enough to tell a—­a lie.  And—­I shall say yes to your other question, Mr. Jelnik.”

But he shook his head.  “Ah, no, my dear!  You’d be called upon to make too many sacrifices.  I couldn’t bear that!”

“A man needn’t be worried about the sacrifices a woman makes for him when she knows he loves her.”