“Will you miss me a little?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said breathlessly, “and I shall be curious to know how your—­your enterprise succeeds.”

“Honora,” he said, “it is only a week since I first met you, but I know my own mind.  You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without boasting that I can give you what you desire in life—­after a while.  I love you.  You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether what I know to be the great happiness of my life.  Will you marry me?”

She sat silent upon the rock.  She heard him speak, it is true; but, try as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her.  She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart was involved to such an extent.  He was very near her, but he had not attempted to touch her.  His voice, towards the end of his speech, had trembled with passion—­a true note had been struck.  And she had struck it, by no seeming effort!  He wished to marry her!

He aroused her again.

“I have frightened you,” he said.

She opened her eyes.  What he beheld in them was not fright—­it was nothing he had ever seen before.  For the first time in his life, perhaps, he was awed.  And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to him with a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold.  He had not realized what he was getting.

“I am not frightened,” she said.  “Yes, I will marry you.”

He was not sure whether—­so brief was the moment!—­he had held and kissed her cheek.  His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her poised on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking back at him over her shoulder.

He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out into the open golf course.  He tried to think, but failed.  Never in his orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him.  He caught up with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium.

“Honora,” he said thickly, “I can’t grasp it.”

She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her mouth.

“What are you thinking of?” he asked.

“I am thinking of Mrs. Holt’s expression when we tell her,” said Honora.  “But we shan’t tell her yet, shall we, Howard?  We’ll have it for our own secret a little while.”

The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm.

“We’ll tell her whenever you like, dear,” he replied.

In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua’s trotter to lunch—­much too rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late.

“I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away,” he whispered to her on the stairs.

“You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree,” whispered Honora, laughing, “only more purple, and not so ghostlike.”