“Have I offended you?”

“No,” she answered without looking around, “only sometimes you are so very—­personal.”

“Because the First and Second Persons Singular Number are the most interesting persons in the world, and—­Hermione, in all this big world there is only one person I want.  Could you ever learn to love a peanut man?”

“That would all depend—­on the peanut man,” she answered softly, “and you—­you don’t talk or act a little bit like a real peanut man.”

“Well, could you stoop to love this peanut man just as he is, with all his faults and failures, love him enough to trust yourself to his keeping, to follow him into the unknown, to help him find that Beautiful City of Perhaps—­could you, Hermione?” As he ended he rose to his feet, but swiftly, dexterously, she eluded him.

“Wait!” she pleaded, facing him across the table, “I—­I want to talk to you—­to ask you some questions, and I want you to be serious, please.”

“Solemn as sixty judges!” he nodded.

“Well, first, Mr. Geoffrey—­why do you pretend to sell peanuts?”

“Pretend!” he repeated, trying to sound aggrieved.

“Oh, I’m not blind, Mr. Geoffrey.”

“No, indeed—­I think your eyes are the most beau—­”

“Oh, please, please be serious!”

“As a dozen owls!”

“I—­I know,” she went on quickly, “I’m sure you haven’t always had to live in such—­such places as Mulligan’s.  I know you don’t belong here as I do.  Is it necessity has driven you to live here or only—­curiosity?”

“Well—­er—­perhaps a little of both,” he admitted.

“Then you’re not obliged to sell peanuts for a living?”

“‘Obliged’ is scarcely the word, perhaps; let us call it a peanut penchant, a hobby, a—­”

“You are not quite so—­poverty-stricken as you pretend?” Her voice was very soft and gentle, but she kept her head averted, also her foot was tapping nervously in its worn shoe.

“Oh, as to money,” he answered, “I have enough for my simple needs, but in every other sense I am a miserable pauper.  You see, there are some things no money can buy, and they are generally the best things of life.”

“And so,” said she, interrupting him gently, “you come here to Mulligan’s, you deceive every one into thinking you are very poor, you make a pretence of selling peanuts and push a barrow through the streets—­why?”

“First, because pushing a barrow is—­er—­very healthy exercise.”

“Yes, Mr. Geoffrey?” she said in the same soft voice.

“And second,” he continued, wishing he could see her face, “second, because I find it—­er, well—­highly amusing.”

“Amusing!” she cried, turning suddenly, her eyes very bright and her cheeks hot and anger-flushed.  “Amusing!” she repeated, “ah, yes—­that’s just it—­it’s all only a joke to you, to be done with when it grows tiresome.  But my life here—­our life is very real—­ah, terribly real, and has been—­sordid sometimes.  What is only sport to you for a little while is deadly earnest to me; you are only playing at poverty, but I must live it—­”