’I spoke to you once, some time ago, on the abstract grounds of the question we have under discussion.  These, being only a wild lily, you did not comprehend.  You do not love me, or you would give me my promise fast enough on other grounds.  You leave me a very difficult way.  You leave me no way but to take measures to remove you from temptation.  Is not that less pleasant, Hazel, than to give me the promise?’

She was silent for several minutes; not pondering the question, but fighting the pain.  To be forced into anything,—­ to have him take that tone with her!—­

‘How will you do it?’ she said.

He hesitated and then answered gently,

‘You need not ask me that.  You will not make it necessary.’

‘Not ask?’ said Wych Hazel rousing up.  ’Of course I ask!  Do you expect to frighten me off my feet with a mere impersonal “it"?’—­Then with a laugh which somehow told merely of pain, she added:  ’You might cut short my allowance, and stint me in slippers,—­only that unfortunately the allowance is a fixed fact.’

‘I did not mean to threaten,’ he said in a voice that certainly spoke of pain on his own part.  ’Is it so much to promise, Hazel?’

‘You did do it, however,’ said the girl,—­’but we will pass that.  Everything is “much” to promise.  And why I refuse, Mr. Rollo, is not the question.  But it seems to me, that while my father might command me, on my allegiance, to give such a promise, no delegated authority of his can reach so far.  I may find myself mistaken.’

‘Do me justice,’ he said.  ’I did not command a promise; I sued for it.  The protection the promise was to throw around you, I will secure in other ways if I must.  But do not forget, Hazel, why I do it.’

‘I do not believe you know,’ said the girl excitedly. ’ “Wild lilies?”—­why, even wild elephants are not usually required to tie their own knots.  What comes next?  I should like to have the whole, if possible, before I get home—­which seems likely to be about breakfast time.’

’Reo is driving as fast as he ought to drive, such a night.  What do you mean by “what comes next"?’

‘You said, I thought, you had several things to speak of.’

’I remember.  I was going to ask you to go to see Gyda sometimes.’

’That is already disposed of—­if I am to be allowed to go nowhere,’ said Hazel, with a rush of pain which very nearly got into her voice.  ‘The next, Mr. Rollo?’

‘I think, nothing next.  You know,’ he went on, speaking half lightly, and yet with a thread of tender persuasion in his voice, ’you know that next year you can dispose of me.  Seeing that in the mean while you cannot help yourself, would it not be better to give me the assurance that for this year you will forego the waltz? and let things go on as they are?  Field mice always make the best of circumstances.’

‘All summer,’ she answered, ’you have not even taken the trouble to forbid me!  And now, forbidding will not do, but you must use threats.  They might at least wait until I had disobeyed.’