mind not to tell you who the other woman is as you are not
interested."

"Then I shall conclude she will not have anything to do with you,"
came the quick retort. And then her fascinating mouth twitched at the
corners in a way that threatened to undo van Hert entirely. He looked
away with a half-fierce expression. "If you don't want me to crush you
in my arms out here in a public road, don't do that."

"Don't do what?..." innocently; and then they both laughed.

When they were serious again his voice sounded a deeper and more
forceful note. "Dearest," he said, still imprisoning her hand, "it
seems superfluous for me to tell you how much I love that other woman,
as superfluous as to name her. I seem as if I had neither a thought
nor an idea nor a feeling that does not love her."

"Then let us hope she is not a stiff-necked Britisher," quoth Diana,
still as if a little afraid to be serious.

"Ah!..." and he raised her hand to his lips. "I believe you will make
me love the whole race."

"That would complicate matters exceedingly for you," with a
mischievous taunt in her eyes. "You seem to have hated them so very
satisfactorily up to now. What shall you say to your colleagues the
next time they are expecting you at one of their fiery denunciation
meetings?... I have married a wife, an English one, therefore I cannot
come?..."

"Shall I have married her?..." and he looked hard into her face,
blissfully indifferent to her shafts.

"Married whom?..." she asked, provokingly.

He clenched his teeth together. "I feel as if I could shake you!..."
and he glanced round to see if anyone were in sight.

"O, if you're going to be that sort of a tyrant!..." Diana began. But
she got no further. No one was in sight, not even the boy with the
horses. And van Hert just gathered her into his arms and crushed her
for the sheer joy of it until she cried for mercy. "Say you will be
good and treat me with proper respect," he demanded before he released
her, and Diana was compelled to promise.

"But I won't marry you," she added, wickedly, the moment she was free.
And then to save herself from a second undignified surrender she had
to capitulate quickly, and add, "At least, not before next week."

Then she raised her eyes, shining with happiness, to his. "Meinheer
van Hert, if my memory serves me rightly, you have not yet asked me
the most important question of all."

He raised her hand again to his lips, with a movement of rever