“Oh, you have been so good to me—­so sweet to me,” and before he knew what she was doing, she had lifted one of his hands in her two slender ones and touched it with her lips.

Outraged—­enchanted—­bewildered—­he tried to catch her in his arms.  But she slipped away from him and with her hands behind her, she looked at him, smiling through tears, her fair hair blown back from her temples, her delicate face alive with feeling.

“I can’t say yes—­it wouldn’t be honest if I did—­it wouldn’t be fair to you.  But, oh, dear, I’m so sorry—­so dreadfully sorry—­if it’s my fault—­if I’ve misled you.  I thought I’d tried hard to show what I really felt—­that I wanted to be friends—­but not—­not this.  Dear Lord Tatham, I do like and admire you so much—­but—­”

“You don’t want to marry me!” he said bitterly, turning away.

She paused a moment.

“No”—­the word came with soft decision—­“no.  And if I were to marry you without—­without that feeling—­you have a right to—­I should be doing wrong—­to you—­and to myself.  You see”—­she looked down, the points of her white shoe drawing circles on the grass, as though to help out her faltering speech—­“I—­I’m not what I believe you think me.  I’ve got all sorts of hard, independent notions in my mind.  I want to paint—­and study—­and travel—­I want to be free—­”

“You should be free as air!” he interrupted passionately.

“Ah, but no!—­not if I married.  I shouldn’t want to be free in that way, if—­”

“If you were in love?  I understand.  And you’re not in love with me.  Why should you be?” said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility.  “Why on earth should you be?  But I’d adore you—­I’d give you anything in the world you wanted.”

Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; the high notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering bass of Delorme.

“Don’t let them find us,” said Lydia impetuously—­“I’ve so much to say.”

Tatham turned, and led the way to the pillared darkness of a pergola to their left.  One side of it was formed by a high yew hedge; on the other, its rose-twined arches looked out upon the northern stretches of the park, and on the garden front of Duddon.  There it lay, the great house, faintly lit; and there in front stretched its demesne, symbol of its ancient rule and of its modern power.  A natural excitement passed through Lydia as they paused, and she caught its stately outline through the night.  And then, the tameless something in her soul, which was her very self, rose up, rejoicing in its own strength, and yet—­wistful, full of tenderness.  Now!—­let her play her stroke—­her stroke in the new great game that was to be, in the new age, between men and women.