“I’m not a knight of old,” he went on, turning his handsome, sun-browned face towards her,—­“but I’m sure I love you as much as ever the Sieur Amadis could have loved his unknown lady.  So much indeed do I love you that I couldn’t write about it to save my life!—­though I did write verses at Oxford once—­very bad ones!” He laughed.  “But I can do one thing the Sieur Amadis didn’t do—­I can keep faithful to my Vision of the glory unattainable’—­and if I don’t marry you I’ll marry no-body—­so there!”

She looked at him curiously and wistfully.

“You will not be so foolish,” she said—­“You will not put me into the position of the Sieur Amadis, who married some one who loved him, merely out of pity!”

He sprang up from the grass beside her.

“No, no!  I won’t do that, Innocent!  I’m not a coward!  If you can’t love me, you shall not marry me, just because you are sorry for me!  That would be intolerable!  I wouldn’t have you for a wife at all under such circumstances.  I shall be perfectly happy as a bachelor—­perhaps happier than if I married.”

“And what about Briar Farm?” she asked.

“Briar Farm can get on as best it may!” he replied, cheerily—­ “I’ll work on it as long as I live and hand it down to some one worthy of it, never fear!  So there, Innocent!—­be happy, and don’t worry yourself!  Keep to your old knight and your strange fancies about him—­you may be right in your ideas of love, or you may be wrong; but the great point with me is that you should be happy—­ and if you cannot be happy in my way, why you must just be happy in your own!”

She looked at him with a new interest, as he stood upright, facing her in all the vigour and beauty of his young manhood.  A little smile crept round the corners of her mouth.

“You are really a very handsome boy!” she said—­“Quite a picture in your way!  Some girl will be very proud of you!”

He gave a movement of impatience.

“I must go back to the orchard,” he said—­“There’s plenty to do.  And after all, work’s the finest thing in the world—­quite as fine as love—­perhaps finer!”

A faint sense of compunction moved her at his words—­she was conscious of a lurking admiration for his cool, strong, healthy attitude towards life and the things of life.  And yet she was resentful that he should be capable of considering anything in the world “finer” than love.  Work?  What work?  Pruning trees and gathering apples?  Surely there were greater ambitions than these?  She watched him thoughtfully under the fringe of her long eyelashes, as he moved off.

“Going to the orchard?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She smiled a little.

“That’s right!”