“Is it likely!  Why should you?” he said.  “I was just an ordinary man, crossing your path for the first and perhaps the only time.  Good heavens! there was no reason why you should give a thought to me, why I should linger in your mind for half a moment after I was out of your sight.  But for me—­Haven’t I told you how beautiful you are, Ida!  You are the loveliest, the sweetest.—­But, even if you had not been—­I mean it is not because you are so beautiful that I love you—­” She looked at him with a puzzled, troubled look.

“No!  I can’t explain.  See, now, there’s not a look of yours, not a feature that I don’t know by heart as if I’d learnt it.  When I am away from you I can see you—­see the way your hair clusters in soft little curls at your forehead, the long lashes sweeping your cheek, the—­the trick your eyes have of turning from grey to violet—­oh, I know your face by heart, and I love it for its beauty; but if you were to lose it all, if you were not the loveliest creature God had ever made, it would make no difference.  You would still be you:  and it is you I want.  Ida—­give yourself to me—­trust me!  Oh, dearest, you don’t know what love is!  Let me teach you!”

Once again he got hold of her hand; and she let it remain in his grasp; but her quiescence did not mean yielding, and he knew it.

“No,” she said, with a deep breath.  “It is true that I do not know.  And I am—­afraid.”  A wan little smile that was more piteous than tears curved her lips:  for “afraid” seemed strange coming from her, the fearless child of the hills and dales.  “If—­if I said ’yes’—­Ah, but I do not!” she broke off as he made to draw her to him, and she shrank back.  “I do not!  I said ‘if,’ it would not be true; it would not be fair.  For I do not know.  I might be—­sorry, after—­after you had gone.  And it would be too late then.”

“You’re right,” he assented, grimly.  “Once I got you, no power on earth should make me let you go again.”

Her lips quivered and her eyes drooped before his.  How strange a thing this love was, that it should change a man so!

“I don’t want to force you to answer,” he said, after a pause.  “Yes, I do!  I’d give half the remainder of my life to hear you say the one word, ‘yes.’  But I won’t.  It’s too—­too precious.  Ah, don’t you understand!  I want your love, your love, Ida!”

“Yes, I understand,” she murmured.  “And—­and I would say it if—­if I were sure.  But I—­yes, I am all confused.  It is like a dream.  I want to think, to ask myself if—­if I can do what you want.”

She put up her hand to her lips with a slight gesture, as if to keep them from trembling.

“I want to be alone to think of all—­all you have told me.”

Her gauntlet slipped from her hand, and he knelt on one knee and picked it up, and still kneeling, took both her hands in his.  It did not occur to him to remember that the woman who hesitates is won; something in her girlish innocence, in her exquisitely sweet candour, filled him with awe.