you
hate me?"

"I did, most cordially; but not half so much as I despised myself the
next moment. As to its being like a lover's quarrel, it wasn't. It was
more bitter, so much more love than lovers ever give had to be taken
back. Besides, it had no dignity, and a lover's quarrel always has. A
lover's quarrel always springs from a more serious cause, and has an air
of romantic tragedy. This had no grace of the kind. It was a poor shabby
little squabble."

"O, don't call it so, Basil! I should like you to respect even a quarrel
of ours more than that. It was tragical enough with me, for I didn't
see how it could ever be made up. I knew I couldn't make the advances. I
don't think it is quite feminine to be the first to forgive, is it?"

"I'm sure I can't say. Perhaps it would be rather unladylike."

"Well, you see, dearest, what I am trying to get at is this: whether we
shall love each other the more or the less for it. I think we shall get
on all the better for a while, on account of it. But I should have said
it was totally out of character it's something you might have expected
of a very young bridal couple; but after what we've been through, it
seems too improbable."

"Very well," said Basil, who, having made all the concessions, could
not enjoy the quarrel as she did, simply because it was theirs; "let 's
behave as if it had never been."

"O no, we can't. To me, it's as if we had just won each other."

In fact it gave a wonderful zest and freshness to that ride round the
mountain, and shed a beneficent glow upon the rest of their journey. The
sun came out through the thin clouds, and lighted up the vast plain that
swept away north and east, with the purple heights against the eastern
sky. The royal mountain lifted its graceful mass beside them, and hid
the city wholly from sight. Peasant-villages, in the shade of beautiful
elms, dotted the plain in every direction, and at intervals crept up
to the side of the road along which they drove. But these had been
corrupted by a more ambitious architecture since Basil saw them last,
and were no longer purely French in appearance. Then, nearly every house
was a tannery in a modest way, and poetically published the fact by
the display of a sheep's tail over the front door, like a bush at
a wine-shop. Now, if the tanneries still existed, the poetry of the
cheeps' tails had vanished from the portals. But our friends were
consoled by meeting numbers of the peasants jolti