If you only
knew, Sylvia!"
"Yes, but I don't know," she answered, and now she looked at him. "I
suppose that, if I loved, I should know, I should understand."
Her hands lay in his, listless and unresponsive to the pressure of his.
She spoke slowly and thoughtfully, meeting his gaze with troubled eyes.
"Yet you were glad to see me when I came," he urged.
"Glad, yes! You are my friend, my one friend. I was very glad. But the
gladness passed. When you asked me to come with you across the garden, I
was wanting you to go away."
The words hurt him. They could not but hurt him. But she was so plainly
unconscious of offence, she was so plainly trying to straighten out her
own tangled position, that he could feel no anger.
"Why?" he asked; and again she frankly answered him.
"I was humbled," she replied, "and I have had so much humiliation
in my life."
The very quietude of her voice and the wistful look upon the young tired
face hurt him far more than her words had done.
"Sylvia," he cried, and he drew her toward him. "Come with me now! My
dear, there will be an end of all humiliation. We can be married, we can
go down to my home on the Sussex Downs. That old house needs a mistress,
Sylvia. It is very lonely." He drew a breath and smiled suddenly. "And I
would like so much to show you it, to show you all the corners, the
bridle-paths across the downs, the woods, and the wide view from Arundel
to Chichester spires.
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