On the winding road no one was in sight, and from our elevation a view of the tiny town below could be glimpsed through the bare branches of the trees of the little mountain we were ascending; and about us was no sound save the crunch of the buggy-wheels on the gravel road, and the tread of the slow-moving horse.  It was a new world we were in—­a kindly, simple, strifeless world of peace and plenty, and calm and content, and the crowded quarters close to Scarborough Square, with their poignant problems of sin and suffering, of scant beauty and weary joy, seemed a life apart and very far away.  And the world of the Avenue, the world of handsome homes and deadening luxuries, of social exactions and selfish indulgence, of much waste and unused power, seemed also far away, and just Selwyn and I were together in a little world of our own.

“We might as well have this out, Danny.”  An arm on the back of the buggy, Selwyn looked at me, and in his eyes was that which made me understand he was right.  We might as well have it out.  “For three years you have refused to marry me, and now you say you are more alone than I. We’ve been beating the air, been evading something; refusing to face the thing that is keeping us apart.  What is it?  You know my love for you.  But yours for me—­ You have never told me that you loved me.  Look at me, Danny.”  He turned my face toward him.  “Tell me.  Is it because you do not love me that you will not marry me?”

“No.”  A bird on a bough ahead of us piped to another across the road, and as mate to mate was answered.  “It is not because I do not love you—­Selwyn.  I do—­love you.”  The crushing of my hands hurt, but he said nothing.  “I shall never marry unless I marry you—­but I am not sure—­we should be happy.”

“Why not?  Is there anything that man could do I would not do to make you happy?  All that I am or may be, all that I have to give—­and of love I have much—­is for you.  What is it, then, you fear?  Your freedom?  I should never interfere with that.”

I shook my head.  “It is not my freedom.  What I fear is our lack of sympathy with, our lack of understanding of, certain points of view.  We look at life so differently.”

“But certainly a woman doesn’t expect a man to think just as she thinks, to feel as she feels, to see as she sees, nor does he expect her to see and feel and think his way in all things.  As individuals they—­”

“Of course I wouldn’t expect, wouldn’t want my husband to feel toward all things as I feel.  I would not want a stupid husband with no mind of his own!  You know very well it is nothing of that sort.  If, however, we cared not at all for the same sort of books; if we saw little alike in art and literature, in music or morals, in science or religion; if the same interests did not appeal; if to the same impulse there was no response—­we could hardly hope for genuine comradeship.  In most of those things we are together, but life is so much bigger than things, and in our ideas of life and what to do with it we are pretty far apart.”