"Good gracious! You aren't going to do it?"
"I am," retorted the other gloomily. "It's good money." Almost
immediately he added, "Damn the money!"
"No; no; you mustn't do that. You must go, of course. Would--will it
take long?"
"I'm not coming back."
"I don't _want_ you not to come back," said Barbran, in a queer,
frightened voice. She put out her hand to him and hastily withdrew it.
He said desperately: "What's the use? I can't sit here forever looking
at you and--and dreaming of--of impossible things, and eating my heart
out with my nose painted green."
"The poor nose!" murmured Barbran.
With one of her home-laundered handkerchiefs dipped in turpentine, she
gently rubbed it clean. It then looked (as she said later in a feeble
attempt to palliate her subsequent conduct) very pink and boyish and
pathetic, but somehow faithful and reliable and altogether lovable.
So she kissed it. Then she tried to run away. The attempt failed.
It was not Barbran's nose that got kissed next. Nor, for that matter,
was it young Phil's. Then he held her off and shut his eyes, for the
untrammeled exercise of his reasoning powers, and again demanded of
Barbran and the fates:
"What's the use?"
"What's the use of what?" returned Barbran tremulously.
"Of all this? Your father's a millionaire, and I won't--I can't--"
"He isn't!" cried Barbran.
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