"I know that," she said quickly. "Poor father went through a lot of privations before he found someone to take pity on him; and dear Aubrey must find it hard sometimes to make a living."
"I wasn't thinking about poor father or dear Aubrey," exclaimed Quarle snappishly. "They'll get on all right for themselves. But there is someone else, my child—someone perhaps we have not quite understood."
She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it firmly, and patted it as he went on speaking.
"I know, my dear—I know all about it, and I know what you feel," said Simon Quarle. "Only in this poor strange topsy-turvy world of ours we are all a little like children—wilful and headstrong, and always so sure that we know what is best for us. And the great god Chance happens along one day, and sees that we are in a bit of a muddle, and are spoiling our lives; and shakes us up, and tumbles us about—and perhaps sets us straight again. This one has a gilded toy, and doesn't know how much it's worth; and so the toy is snatched away and given to another; and this one has nothing, and gets perhaps not the gift it craved, but something better yet. What if I told you, Bessie, that the man who played that great game of make-believe with you had touched disaster too, and was as poor as you are?"
"You have heard from him?" she asked quickly.
He nodded slowly. "I have heard from him—and he has been through rather a bad time. The game of make-believe for him is ended; he has come down to the realities. All his money is gone; he's got to work and fight and strive, as every other man must work and fight and strive in this world, if he's to be worthy to be called a man at all. And he wanted to know about you, Bessie."
"Only the old whim—only the old feeling that he's sorry for me. I'm only a little patient drudge again, in the house where he first saw me; and even the poor old garden that I think he laughed at secretly to himself is gone, and blotted out. You mustn't tell him where I am; I don't want him to know."
"Did you love him, Bess?" Simon Quarle stood squarely before her, with his hands clasped behind his back.
She hesitated for a moment, and then looked up at him, with a little touch of colour stealing over her white face, and with a smile in her eyes. "Yes," she said slowly—"I loved him very dearly. If he blundered, he blundered rather finely; and I shall always think of him as I knew him first—someone frank and friendly, coming out of the great world, and liking me a little because I liked him. There—there—don't talk about it; he has his own friends, I suppose, even in his poverty. You said he was poor—didn't you?"
"Yes—very poor. Poor enough, I should think, to live in Arcadia Street in real earnest," said Simon. "Well—I'm sorry if I've touched on anything that has pained you; best forget it. Love's a queer business, and I'm not sure that you're not well out of it. Let the brute starve; it'll do him good."