Fairfax Cary stooped, picked up Pope, and regarded the open pages with disfavour.  “And at home he probably reads only The Complete Farrier—­on Sundays maybe the Gentleman’s Magazine or The Book of Dreams!”

“Who?” asked Unity.

“My rival.  If he read Greek, he would yet be my rival and an ignorant fellow.”

“He does read Greek,” said Miss Dandridge severely, “and ’ignorant fellow’ is the last thing that could be applied to him.  Did you ride over from Greenwood to be scornful?”

“I rode over to be as meek as Moses and as patient as Job—­”

“They were never my favourites in Scripture.”

“Nor mine.”  He closed the book, swung his arm, and Pope crashed into a lilac bush.  “There,” he said, “goes meekness, patience, and the eighteenth century.  This is the nineteenth.  Time is no endless draught, no bottomless cup.  Waste of life is the cankered rose.  You know that you treat me badly.”

“Do I?—­I did not mean to.”

“You do.  Now you’ve got to say to me, ‘I love you and I’ll marry you,’ or ‘I love you not and I’m going to marry some one else.’  If it’s the first, I’ll be the happiest man on earth; if the second, I’ll go far away and try to forget.”

“Won’t you sit down?”

“You have kept me standing in spirit these three years. 
Standing!—­kneeling!  Now, will you or won’t you?”

“I do not care in the least for Mr. Page.  He is merely an agreeable acquaintance.”

“And Mr. Dabney?”

“The same.  He entertains me—­”

“Mr. Lee—­Mr. Minor—­Ned Hunter—­”

“What applies to one applies to all.”

“I am glad to hear it.  All merely agreeable acquaintances.  And Mr. Fairfax Cary?  He is, perhaps, in the same category?”

“Perhaps.  Oh, what a beautiful butterfly!—­there, on that trumpet flower!  I think it is a Tawny Emperor.”

“I see,” said the young man.  “Excuse me a moment while I frighten him away.”  He gravely shook the trumpet vine, and the light splendour spread its wings and sailed to a securer realm.  “Now that the Emperor is gone perhaps you will pay attention.  Am I merely an agreeable acquaintance?”

“Oh—­agreeable!” murmured Miss Dandridge.

“I am not trying to be agreeable.  I am looking for the truth.  Am I, then, merely an acquaintance?”

Unity sighed.  “Why not say ’friend’?”

“‘Friend’ is good as far as it goes.  It does not go far enough.”

“Yes, it does,” said Miss Dandridge.  “It goes further than all your less sober travellers.

     “Love me little, love me long.

“You want such violent things!”

“I want you.  Is it, then, only a poor, pale friendship?”

“Why call it poor and pale?  Friendship can be rosy-cheeked as well as—­as other things.  Look how the grass is burned—­and all the locusts are singing of the heat!”

“It is beneath you to trifle so.  If this is all, it is poor and pale, and the sooner it dies, the better!  Unity, I’m waiting for your coup de grace.”