“If they were all true, they would be more than enough.  Is the chief reason the last?”

“It is the last of all.  I have not given it to you yet.  Some things are better not said at all.”

“They must be bad things,” answered Beatrice, with an air of innocence.

She was beginning to understand, at last, that he really intended to make her a declaration of love.  It was unheard of, almost inconceivable.  But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight, his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its rather grave lines.  His voice, too, had a new sound in it.  Indifferent as he might be by daylight and in ordinary life, the magic of the place and scene affected him a little at the present moment.  Perhaps a memory of other years, when his pulse had quickened and his voice had trembled oddly, just touched his heart now and it responded with a faint thrill.  For a moment at least he forgot his sordid plan, and Beatrice’s own personal attraction was upon him.

And she was very lovely as she sat there, looking down at him, with white folded hands, hatless in the warm night, her eyes full of the dancing rays that trembled upon the softly rippling water.

“If they are not bad things,” she said, speaking again, “why do you not tell them to me?”

“You would laugh.”

“I have laughed enough to-night.  Tell me!”

“Tell you!  Yes—­that is easy to do.  But it would be so hard to make you understand!  It is the difference between a word and a thought, between belief and mere show, between truth and hearsay—­more than that—­much more than I can tell you.  It means so much to me—­it may mean so little to you, when I have said it!”

“But if you do not say it, how can I guess it, or try to understand it?”

“Would you try?  Would you?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was soft, gentle, persuasive.  She felt something she had never felt, and it must be love, she thought.  She had always liked him a little better than the rest.  But surely, this was more than mere liking.  She had a strange longing to hear him say the words, to start, as her instinct told her she must, when he spoke them, to be told for the first time that she was loved.  Is it strange, after all?  Young, imaginative and full of life, she had been brought up to believe that she was to be married to some man she scarcely knew, after a week’s acquaintance, without so much as having talked five minutes with him alone; she had been taught that love was a legend and matrimony a matter of interest.  And yet here was the man whom her mother undoubtedly wished her to marry, not only talking with her as they had often talked before, with no one to hear what was said, but actually on the verge of telling her that he loved her.  Could anything be more delicious, more original, more in harmony with the place and hour?  And as if all this were not enough, she really felt the touch and thrill of love in her own heart, and the leaping wonder to know what was to come.