"Yes!" cried Barbara, "that's it! I had forgotten those last lines—how stupid of me!"
"Not at all," said Adrian. "You remembered all that concerned you, the rest was quite superfluous."
"Oh, but how I did try to remember the end!" she continued pensively. "It haunted me. If I had only had a minute more! But all the same I felt as if I had had something of a message from you that day. It was my valentine, wasn't it?"
Scarlett's eyes, with a look half whimsical, half touched with tender melancholy, met hers.
"I wish we were worth a little more—my poems and I!" said he. "I wish I were a hero, and had written an epic. Yes, by Jove! an epic in twelve books."
"Oh, not for me!" cried Barbara.
CHAPTER IX.
A VERSE OF AN OLD SONG.
"Adrian!"
The name was uttered with just a hint of hesitating appeal.