“Oh, but it has, though. Look here, Miss Eden. By-the-bye, haven’t you got a Christian name?”
She hesitated again for a moment, and then said, in a low voice,—
“Olwen.”
Perhaps it was the fact that she was wearing his overcoat which gave him a sort of proprietary feeling. At any rate it was with the simplest straightforwardness that he proceeded, having learnt her Christian name, to call her by it.
“Look here, Olwen, I’m not a rich man; I’ve not even begun to be a successful one. Perhaps I never shall be anything but a struggling man all my life. I tell you so frankly. Perhaps, I say. But I do feel something in me which tells me that if I had the woman I want to struggle for I should be so strong, so dogged, that I should make my way in the long run; I should live for her, I should fight for her, ah! and in the long run I should grow rich for her.”
“I don’t want to be rich,” remarked Miss Eden, plaintively, from under the overcoat.
“Well, then, I could remain poor for her, which would be easier still. Come, come, don’t you think I’d try to make you happy?”
“I—I don’t think my guardian would say so?”
Bayre laughed.
“Would you ask him then?”