He had been lying at her feet; now he rose slowly.  “You are not like my Leila to-day.”

“Oh, John!”

“No—­and it is hard, because I am going away—­and—­it will not be pleasant to think how you are changed.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say such things to me, John.”

“I had to—­because—­I love you.  If I was a boy when I was, as you say, silly, I was in earnest.  It was nonsense to ask you, to say you would marry me some day.  It wasn’t so very long ago after all; but I agree with you, it was foolish.  Now I mean to make no such proposal.”

“Please, John.”  She looked up at him as he stood over her so grave, so earnest—­and so like Uncle Jim.  For the time she got the fleeting impression of this being a man.

He hardly heard her appeal.  “I want to say now that I love you.”  For a moment the ‘boy’s will, the wind’s will,’ blew a gale.  “I love you and I always shall.  Some day I shall ask you that foolish question again, and again.”

She too was after all very young and had been playing a bit at being a woman.  Now his expression of passion embarrassed her—­because she had no answer ready; nor was it all entirely disagreeable.

He stood still a moment, and added, “That is all—­I ask nothing now.”

Then she stood up, having to say something and unwilling to hurt him—­wanting not to say too much or too little, and ending by a childlike reply.  “Oh, John, I do wish you would never say such things to me.  I am too young to listen to such nonsense.”

“And I am young too,” he laughed.  “Well—­well—­let us go home and confess like children.”

“Now I know you are a fool, John Penhallow, and very disagreeable.”

“When we were ever so young, Leila, and we quarrelled, we used to agree not to speak to one another for a day.  Are you cross enough for that now?”

“No, I am not; but I want to feel sure that you will not say such things to me again.”

“I make no promise, Leila; I should break it.  If I gave you a boy’s love, forget it, laugh at it; but if I give you a man’s love, take care.”

This odd drama—­girl and woman, boy and maturing man—­held the stage; now one, now the other.

“Take care, indeed!” she said, repeating his words and turning on him with sudden ungraciousness, “I think we have had enough of this nonsense.”

She was in fact the more disturbed of the two, and knowing it let anger loose to chase away she knew not what, which was troubling her with emotion she could neither entirely control nor explain later as the result of what seemed to her mere foolishness.  If he was himself disturbed by his storm of primitive passion, he did not show it as she did.

“Yes,” he said in reply, “we have had for the present enough of this—­enough talk, I mean—­”

“We!” she exclaimed.

“Leila! do you want me to apologize?”

“No.”