“Yes—­six pianos.”

“And you will learn me?”

He shuddered and hesitated.

“Well—­I can’t say, Mary Ann.”

“Why not?  Why won’t you?  You said you would!  You learn Rosie.”

“I may not be there, you see,” he said, trying to put a spice of playfulness into his tones.

“Oh, but you will,” she said feverishly.  “You will take me there.  We will go there instead of where you said—­instead of the green waters.”  Her eyes were wild and witching.

He groaned inwardly.

“I cannot promise you now,” he said slowly.  “Don’t you see that everything is altered?”

“What’s altered?  You are here and here am I.”  Her apprehension made her almost epigrammatic.

“Ah, but you are quite different now, Mary Ann.”

“I’m not—­I want to be with you just the same.”

He shook his head.  “I can’t take you with me,” he said decisively.

“Why not?” She caught hold of his arm entreatingly.

“You are not the same Mary Ann—­to other people.  You are a somebody.  Before, you were a nobody.  Nobody cared or bothered about you—­you were no more than a dead leaf whirling in the street.”

“Yes, you cared and bothered about me,” she cried, clinging to him.

Her gratitude cut him like a knife.  “The eyes of the world are on you now,” he said.  “People will talk about you if you go away with me now.”

“Why will they talk about me?  What harm shall I do them?”

Her phrases puzzled him.

“I don’t know that you will harm them,” he said slowly, “but you will harm yourself.”

“How will I harm myself?” she persisted.

“Well, one day, you will want a—­a husband.  With all that money it is only right and proper you should marry—­”

“No, Mr. Lancelot, I don’t want a husband.  I don’t want to marry.  I should never want to go away from you.”

There was another painful silence.  He sought refuge in a brusque playfulness.

“I see you understand I’m not going to marry you.”

“Yessir.”

He felt a slight relief.

“Well, then,” he said, more playfully still.  “Suppose I wanted to go away from you, Mary Ann?”

“But you love me,” she said, unaffrighted.

He started back perceptibly.

After a moment, he replied, still playfully, “I never said so.”

“No, sir; but—­but—­” she lowered her eyes; a coquette could not have done it more artlessly—­“but I—­know it.”

The accusation of loving her set all his suppressed repugnances and prejudices bristling in contradiction.  He cursed the weakness that had got him into this soul-racking situation.  The silence clamoured for him to speak—­to do something.

“What—­what were you crying about before?” he said abruptly.

“I—­I don’t know, sir,” she faltered.

“Was it Tom’s death?”