k, won't you? I daresay it's much too soon--I daresay
you can't think of it--yet. But I love you. I love you so dearly! I can't
keep it to myself. I have--ever since I first saw you. You won't be angry
with me for speaking? You won't think I took you by surprise? I don't
want to hurry you--I only want you to know--"

Emotion choked him. Lydia, after a murmur he couldn't catch, hid her face
in her hands.

He waited; and already there crept through him the dull sense of
disaster. The impulse to speak had been irresistible, and now--he wished
he had not spoken.

At last she looked up.

"Oh, you have been so good to me--so sweet to me," and before he knew
what she was doing, she had lifted one of his hands in her two slender
ones and touched it with her lips.

Outraged--enchanted--bewildered--he tried to catch her in his arms. But
she slipped away from him and with her hands behind her, she looked at
him, smiling through tears, her fair hair blown back from her temples,
her delicate face alive with feeling.

"I can't say yes--it wouldn't be honest if I did--it wouldn't be fair
to you. But, oh, dear, I'm so sorry--so dreadfully sorry--if it's my
fault--if I've misled you. I thought I'd tried hard to show what I really
felt--that I wanted to be friends--but not--not this. Dear Lord Tatham, I
do like and admire you so much--but--"

"You don't want to marry me!" he said bitterly, turning away.

She paused a moment.

"No"--the word came with soft decision--"no. And if I were to marry you
without--without that feeling--you have a right to--I should be doing
wrong--to you--and to myself. You see"--she looked down, the points of
her white shoe drawing circles on the grass, as though to help out her
faltering speech--"I--I'm not what I believe you think me. I've got all
sorts of hard, independent notions in my mind. I want to paint--and
study--and travel--I want to be free--"

"You should be free as air!" he interrupted passionately.

"Ah, but no!--not if I married. I shouldn't want to be free in that way,
if--"

"If you were in love? I understand. And you're not in love with me. Why
should you be?" said poor Tatham, with a new and desperate humility. "Why
on earth should you be? But I'd adore you--I'd give you anything in the
world you wanted."

Sounds of talking and footsteps emerged from the dusk behind them; the
high notes of Lady Barbara, and the answering bass of Delorme.

"Don't let them find us," said Lydia