bability you would have accepted him,
had I not been here to--blunder into the affair."

"He mightn't have asked me, if you hadn't been here to blunder into
the affair," said I, composedly. "Let us drop the subject, please. I
shall never marry The Author." It gave me a sense of relief and
freedom to hear myself say that. "I can't marry The Author."

He went pale. "Sophy--you can't marry me, either," he said.

"Of course not." I wondered at myself for being so calm and
collected. "I knew that all along. You care for another woman. You
told me so, you know."

"I told you no such thing," he said. "I told you I cared for a
woman, but that there was another man. Now I've just been told she
has no idea of accepting the other man. In spite of all he has to
offer, she isn't going to marry him." His face was at once ecstatic
and tortured. "_Why_ won't you marry the other man, Sophy?"

"Because of a dream I dreamed, when I was sick," I said
noncommittally.

"Ah! And did you dream that somebody called you--and held you--and
wouldn't let you go?"

"I never told you!" I cried.

"No need, Sophy. It was to me you came back." Of a sudden his head
drooped. "And now I can't marry you!"

"Why can't you?"

"Because I'm a beggar."

Nicholas Jelnik a beggar couldn't find lodgment in my brain. I could
only stare at him incredulously.

"I learned some time ago that things were not altogether right over
yonder, but I hadn't the ghost of an idea that my entire estate was
involved; that while I'd been 'tramping'--I'll use Judge Gatchell's
word--the men in whose hands I placed too much power had taken
advantage of it. A very common, every-day story, you see.

"Remains the fact that I'm stripped to the bone. The estate's wiped
out. And," he added, with a grave smile, "I haven't even discovered
the mythical Hynds jewels. Now you see, Sophy, why I can't marry
you."

"I see why you think you can't."

He flushed to the roots of his black hair. Hynds-Jelnik pride rose
in arms.

"I should cut rather a sorry figure marrying the owner of Hynds
House, in the present circumstances," he said curtly. "You will
remember that The Author called me an adventurer! I have told you I
have nothing."

"Aren't you forgetting your profession?"

"No. But I neglected that, too, Sophy. The _Wanderlust_ had me in
its grip."

"What do you propose to do?"

"I shall leave here, put in some months of hard study, and then
fight my way upward. My fath