on in a sort of mist of love and we
haven't settled anything."

"Why can't we go on roaming about, as you call it?"

"We can--up to a point. Only----" he hesitated.

"Only what?"

"Look here. Are you sure I'm the right person, not a possible, but the
person you've dreamed of, thought of?"

"I'm sure you're a darling."

Jenny had no use for subtleties, no anxiety to establish the derivation
of an affection which existed as a simple fact. She was not a girl to
whose lips endearing epithets came easily. She had many words ready to
describe everything except her deepest emotions. In love she became shy
of herself. Maurice had a stock of sweet vocatives which she would have
been too proud to imitate. "Darling" said what she wished to say, and it
was difficult even to say that.

"Well, do you want anybody else?" he asked.

"No."

"You won't get tired of me in another month?"

"Don't be silly."

"You said the other day you didn't trust anybody. Do you mean to say
seriously that you don't trust me?"

"I suppose I do. You're different."

"Only suppose?" asked Maurice.

"Well, I do."

"You're not certain. Great heavens, child, can't you see what a terrible
thing that is to say?"

"I don't see that it's so very terrible."

"But it kills me dead. I feel all the time you think I'm masquerading. I
feel like a figure with a mask in a carnival. I meet you in another
mask. I say, 'Take it off,' and you won't. You shrivel up."

"I don't know who you're getting angry with," said Jenny. "I haven't
said nothing."

"Nothing!" cried Maurice. "It's nothing to tell somebody who adores
you--good heavens, it's raining now! Of course it _would_ rain in the
middle of grappling with a situation. What a damnable climate this is!"

"I'm glad you're going to quarrel with the weather a bit for a change,"
said Jenny. "I think you're in a very nasty mood."

"You don't understand me," said Maurice.

"I don't want to." She spoke coldly.

"Jenny, I'm sorry I said that. Darling girl, do forgive me."

The wind had risen to half a gale. Heath Street was full of people
hurrying to shelter, and the entrance to the Tube station was crowded.

"Don't be angry with me," Maurice whispered as the lift stopped. "I was
tired and foolish. Jenny, I'm sorry."

"If any other man had spoken like you spoke," said Jenny, "I'd have got
up and gone away and never seen him again, not ever, not however much I
might want to, I wouldn't let myself.