not just now."

"Let go my hands!" cried Diana. "I won't be bullied."

In one element he was much stronger than she--the matter of humour.
This leapt up in him suddenly, and he laughed, saying: "Well, you are mean.
You know quite well you'll bully me all the rest of my life.
You might allow a man the one minute of his life when he's allowed to bully."

It was as extraordinary for him to laugh as for her to cry,
and for the first time since her childhood Diana was entirely
off her guard.

"Do you mean you want to marry me?" she said.

"Why, there's a cab at the door!" cried Inglewood, springing up
with an unconscious energy and bursting open the glass doors
that led into the garden.

As he led her out by the hand they realized somehow for the first time
that the house and garden were on a steep height over London. And yet,
though they felt the place to be uplifted, they felt it also to be secret:
it was like some round walled garden on the top of one of the
turrets of heaven.

Inglewood looked around dreamily, his brown eyes devouring
all sorts of details with a senseless delight. He noticed for
the first time that the railings of the gate beyond the garden
bushes were moulded like little spearheads and painted blue.
He noticed that one of the blue spears was loosened in its place,
and hung sideways; and this almost made him laugh. He thought it
somehow exquisitely harmless and funny that the railing should
be crooked; he thought he should like to know how it happened,
who did it, and how the man was getting on.

When they were gone a few feet across that fiery grass they realized
that they were not alone. Rosamund Hunt and the eccentric Mr. Moon,
both of whom they had last seen in the blackest temper of detachment,
were standing together on the lawn. They were standing in quite
an ordinary manner, and yet they looked somehow like people in a book.

"Oh," said Diana, "what lovely air!"

"I know," called out Rosamund, with a pleasure so positive
that it rang out like a complaint. "It's just like that horrid,
beastly fizzy stuff they gave me that made me feel happy."

"Oh, it isn't like anything but itself!" answered Diana, breathing deeply.
"Why, it's all cold, and yet it feels like fire."

"Balmy is the word we use in Fleet Street,"
said Mr. Moon. "Balmy--especially on the crumpet."
And he fanned himself quite unnecessarily with his straw hat.
They were all full of little leaps and pulsations of