'Thank Heaven for that!' he said with the old whimsical look. 'If you did you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I am a selfish brute-selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you, Beethoven?' The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over. 'He never calculates-he just comes and licks my hand-don't look at me as if I were mad, Mary Ann. You don't understand me-thank Heaven again. Come now! Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would be only for your two and a half million dollars?'
'No, sir,' faltered Mary Ann.
'I thought not,' he said triumphantly. 'No, you will always remain a fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann.'
She met his contempt with an audacious glance.
'But I know it wouldn't be for that, Mr. Lancelot.'
'No, no, of course it wouldn't be, not now. But it ought to strike you just the same. It doesn't make you less a fool, Mary Ann. There! There! I don't mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it's not so very dreadful to be a fool. A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann. All I want to do is to open your eyes. Two and a half million dollars are an awful lot of money-a terrible lot of money. Do you know how long it will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?'
'No, sir.' She looked at him wonderingly.
'Two million years. Yes, my child, I can tell you now. You thought I was rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano-yes, and teaching Rosie-for my amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of-sleeplessness,' he smiled at the phrase, 'or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work-by good work if I can, by bad work if I must-but always by hard work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who will think they are ... though they don't know you. It is you, not me, who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me-poor and selfish. And when you do marry-'
'Oh, Mr. Lancelot!' cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, 'why do you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else.'
'Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?'
'Yessir.'
'Here, take my handkerchief.'
'Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else.'
'You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for Sally you didn't know a time would come when-'
'Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young woman now. And this is all different to that.'
'No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and dressed you up'-a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye-'why, by that time, you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is full of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains fixed.'
'Then, perhaps'-she flushed up, her eyes sparkled-'perhaps'-she grew dumb and sad again.
'Perhaps what?'
He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone possessed the silence.
'Perhaps you'll change, too.' She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at him-her eyes were full of soft light.
This time he was dumb.
'Sw-eet!' trilled the canary, 'sw-eet!' though Lancelot felt the throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.
'Acutely answered,' he said at last. 'You're not such a fool after all, Mary Ann. But I'm afraid it will never be, dear. Perhaps if I also made two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might come to you and say-two and two are four-let us go into partnership. But then, you see,' he went on briskly, 'the odds are I may never even have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be that very common thing-a complete failure-and be worse off than even you ever were, Mary Ann.'
'Oh, Mr. Lancelot, I'm so sorry.' And her eyes filled again with tears.
'Oh, don't be sorry for me. I'm a man. I dare say I shall pull through. Just put me out of your mind, dear. Let all that happened at Baker's Terrace be only a bad dream-a very bad dream, I am afraid I must call it. Forget me, Mary Ann. Everything will help you to forget me, thank Heaven, it'll be the best thing for you. Promise me now.'
'Yessir ... if you will promise me.'
'Promise you what?'
'To do me a favour.'
'Certainly, dear, if I can.'
'You have the money, Mr. Lancelot, instead of me-I don't want it, and then you could-'
'Now, now, Mary Ann,' he interrupted, laughing nervously, 'you're getting foolish again, after talking so sensibly.'
'Oh, but why not?' she said plaintively.
'It is impossible,' he said curtly.
'Why is it impossible?' she persisted.
'Because-,' he began, and then he realised with a start that they had come back again to that same old mechanical series of questions-if only in form.
'Because there is only one thing I could ever bring myself to ask you for in this world,' he said slowly.
'Yes; what is that?' she said flutteringly.
He laid his hand tenderly on her hair.
'Merely Mary Ann.'
She leapt up: 'Oh, Mr. Lancelot, take me, take me! You do love me! You do love me!'
He bit his lip. 'I am a fool,' he said roughly. 'Forget me. I ought not to have said anything. I spoke only of what might be-in the dim future-if the-chances and changes of life bring us together again-as they never do. No! You were right, Mary Ann. It is best we should not meet again. Remember your resolution last night.'
'Yessir.' Her submissive formula had a smack of sullenness, but she regained her calm, swallowing the lump in her throat that made her breathing difficult.
'Good-by, then, Mary Ann,' he said, taking her hard red hands in his.
'Good-by, Mr. Lancelot.' The tears she would not shed were in her voice. 'Please, sir-could you-couldn't you do me a favour?-Nothing about money, sir.'
'Well, if I can,' he said kindly.
'Couldn't you just play Good-night and Good-by, for the last time? You needn't sing it-only play it.'
'Why, what an odd girl you are!' he said with a strange, spasmodic laugh. 'Why, certainly! I'll do both, if it will give you any pleasure.'
And, releasing her hands, he sat down to the piano, and played the introduction softly. He felt a nervous thrill going down his spine as he plunged into the mawkish words. And when he came to the refrain, he had an uneasy sense that Mary Ann was crying-he dared not look at her. He sang on bravely:-
'Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
Dream of the old delight;
My spirit is summoned above,
Kiss me, dear love, good-night.'
He couldn't go through another verse-he felt himself all a-quiver, every nerve shattered. He jumped up. Yes, his conjecture had been right. Mary Ann was crying. He laughed spasmodically again. The thought had occurred to him
