when----"

"Please don't go over any old ground. That would bore me."

"It would bore _me_. I will begin where we left off. The problem, if you
remember, was this--to put it baldly--do you care for me, or do you
not?"

"Didn't we get any farther than that?"

"No, we didn't."

"Do I--or--do I not? Really I cannot tell you, Vincent, for I don't know
myself."

"Nonsense! there's no logical dilemma. You can't go on for ever treating
it as an open question."

"Well--you draw such absurdly hard-and-fast lines."

"Audrey, do you honestly suppose that I've walked here thirty miles,
parboiled between sun and rain, in order to be made a fool of?" (in his
excitement Hardy forgot that twenty miles was the precise distance, and
that he had much better have taken the train). "How much longer are you
going to keep up this fiendish cat-and-mouse sort of game?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that ten years is a devil of a time to keep a man waiting for
his answer."

"Ten years?--ten days, you mean."

"Excuse me, I broached this subject for the first time ten years ago."

"Oh, I daresay, when we were both children."

"We are neither of us children now, Audrey."

"Speak for yourself. I was an infant in the eyes of the law till the
other day."

"You are--let me see--five-and-twenty. If you have any mind at all, you
must have made it up by this time."

"The case would be much easier if you were not such a mass of
inconsistency yourself."

"I've been consistent enough in one respect. Do you remember the first
time you stayed with us at Woodford, when you weren't much higher than
that table, and how you and I set off together for Wanstead Woods?"

"Yes--before breakfast. I have never forgotten it."

"Nor I. You did rile me that day, Audrey. You waited till we came within
a stone's-throw of the woods, and then you sat down in a turnip field
and cried because you couldn't go any farther."

"After running at your heels for two miles, like a dog."

"Yes--and, with the irresponsibility of the inferior animal, eating up
the whole of the cake I provided for us both."

"It was perfectly fair; you dragged me out against my will."

"So you argued at the time, but I couldn't follow your reasoning.
Perhaps you have forgotten how I carried you on my back to Woodford, and
then gave the milkman sixpence to drive us the rest of the way home. And
you were such a contemptible little snob that you cried again because
you had to s