made of it in the former case I don't
imagine.

At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. "Well?" she said.

"All I want to say," I said with the querulous note of a misunderstood
child, "is that I can't take this as final. I want to see you and talk
when I'm better, and write. I can't do anything now. I can't argue."

I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, "I can't rest. You
see? I can't do anything."

She sat down beside me again and spoke softly. "I promise I will talk
it all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I will meet you
somewhere so that we can talk. You can't talk now.

"I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know... Will
that do?"

"I'd like to know"

She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it.

Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and rapidly
with her face close to me.

"Dear," she said, "I love you. If it will make you happy to marry me, I
will marry you. I was in a mood just now--a stupid, inconsiderate mood.
Of course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. Women are such
things of mood--or I would have behaved differently. We say 'No' when we
mean 'Yes'--and fly into crises. So now, Yes--yes--yes. I will. I can't
even kiss you. Give me your hand to kiss that. Understand, I am yours.
Do you understand? I am yours just as if we had been married fifty
years. Your wife--Beatrice. Is that enough? Now--now will you rest?"

"Yes," I said, "but why?"

"There are complications. There are difficulties. When you are better
you will be able to--understand them. But now they don't matter. Only
you know this must be secret--for a time. Absolutely secret between us.
Will you promise that?"

"Yes," I said, "I understand. I wish I could kiss you."

She laid her head down beside mine for a moment and then she kissed my
hand.

"I don't care what difficulties there are," I said, and I shut my eyes.

VII

But I was only beginning to gauge the unaccountable elements in
Beatrice. For a week after my return to Lady Grove I had no sign of
her, and then she called with Lady Osprey and brought a huge bunch of
perennial sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies, "just the old flowers there
were in your room," said my aunt, with a relentless eye on me. I didn't
get any talk alone with Beatrice then, and she took occasion to tell us
she was going to London for some indefinite number of weeks. I couldn't
even ple