Mallender looked at Barbie the homeless; noticed her delicate profile, clear-cut against the sky, the sunlight catching the light in her loosened hair, the little sad, wistful mouth, the tears on her eyelashes; looked and cast all prudence figuratively out of the "Window," and to the four winds!
It was true that she had no home, nor had he. Well, all the same, he would ask her to share his life.
"Look here, Miss Miller—Barbie——" he began impulsively, "suppose you come home with me—or—or—if you will wait, I'll return, and make you a home out here."
"But I," growing very red, "don't understand."
"Of course, as usual, I'm a blundering ass, I am asking you to marry me."
Barbie was conscious of the quick throbbing of her heart, and a minute of silence stretched itself out into what seemed to Mallender an interminable period. At last she said:
"You are not in earnest?"
"I swear I am, and in deadly earnest. Barbie, my little Barbie, you don't know how I love you; or how desperately hard I have found it to hold my tongue. I thought I ought to wait, till I'd some sort of home to offer you; but whether it is seeing the sea again, or seeing your tears, or what—I've had to speak!"
Here the uninterested "Cat," anxiously desiring to graze, and bored by this talk, wrenched herself violently away.
"Of course," chucking the animal's head, "I'm not much of a chap. I've made an awful muddle of my affairs, and I'm hideously poor. Just now, I've no money."