when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this
delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was
blushing in the revelation.

The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more
magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in
front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high
gray wall, as it were in the very eye of the nursery window. They
dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then
they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not
spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the
peninsula where under the moon they first had met.

Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask
Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had rested
her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the other
evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day. This
secluded world from which they were now approaching the even greater
seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.

"How often have I been here without you!" said Guy. "How often have I
wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."

They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn that almost veiled
even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.

"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.

And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him
very much.

"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"

"What did you?" she whispered again.

"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I
loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes we'll pick
mushrooms together--shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms,
because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September
afterwards. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."

She shook her head.

"Whisper it."

But she could not, and yet in her heart the foolish names were singing
together.

"How can I leave you?" Guy demanded.

"Leave me?" she echoed.

"I ought. I ought. You see, if I don't I shall never persuade my father
that we must be married next year. I must go to London and show that I'm
in earnest."

"But when will you go?" said Pauline in deep dismay.

"Is your voice sad?" he asked. "Pauline, don't you want me to go?"

"Of course I don't," she repli