He looked at her, perplexed.

“Why should you think marriage is not love?” he asked—­“It is the one thing all lovers wish for—­to be married and to live together always—­”

“Oh, they wish for it, yes, poor things!” she said, with a little uplifting of her brows—­“And when their wishes are gratified, they often wish they had not wished!” She laughed.  “Robin, this talk of ours is making me feel quite merry!  I am amused!”

“I am not!” he replied, irritably—­“You are much too young a girl to think these things—­”

She nodded, gravely.

“I know!  And I ought to get married while young, before I learn too many of ‘these things,’” she said—­“Isn’t that so?  Don’t frown, Robin!  Look at the Sieur Amadis!  How peacefully he sleeps!  He knew all about love!”

“Of course he did!” retorted Robin—­“He was a perfectly sensible man—­he married and had six children.”

Innocent nodded again, and a little smile made two fascinating dimples in her soft cheeks.

“Yes!  But he said good-bye to love first!”

He looked at her in visible annoyance.

“How can you tell?—­what do you know about it?” he demanded.

She lifted her eyes to the glimpses of blue sky that showed in deep clear purity between the over-arching boughs,—­a shaft of sunlight struck on her fair hair and illumined its pale brown to gold, so that for a moment she looked like the picture of a young rapt saint, lost in heavenly musing.

Then a smile, wonderfully sweet and provocative, parted her lips, and she beckoned him to a grassy slope beneath one of the oldest trees, where little tufts of wild thyme grew thickly, filling the air with fragrance.

“Come and sit beside me here,” she said—­“We have the day to ourselves—­Dad said so,—­and we can talk as long as we like.  You ask me what I know?—­not much indeed!  But I’ll tell you what the Sieur Amadis has told me!—­if you care to hear it!”

“I’m not sure that I do,” he answered, dubiously.

She laughed.

“Oh, Robin!—­how ungrateful you are!  You ought to be so pleased!  If you really loved me as much as you say, the mere sound of my voice ought to fill you with ecstasy!  Yes, really!  Come, be good!” And she sat down on the grass, glancing up at him invitingly.  He flung himself beside her, and she extended her little white hand to him with a pretty condescension.

“There!—­you may hold it!” she said, as he eagerly clasped it—­ “Yes, you may!  Now, if the Sieur Amadis had been allowed to hold the hand of the lady he loved he would have gone mad with joy!”

“Much good he’d have done by going mad!” growled Robin, with an affectation of ill-humour—­“I’d rather be sane,—­sane and normal.”

She bent her smiling eyes upon him.

“Would you?  Poor Robin!  Well, you will be—­when you settle down—­”

“Settle down?” he echoed—­“How?  What do you mean?”