"My darling, must I be a burden to you?" he says. "Monica, if this my
courtship is hateful to you, or more than you can bear, dismiss me now,
and I will go from you, no matter what it costs me."

"You are no true lover, to talk like that," she says, with a shadowy
smile.

"I am lover enough to wish you no pain or weariness of spirit."

"I doubt you are too good for me," she answers with a little burst of
feeling.

"I must be a paragon indeed if that be so," returns he. "Oh, Monica, if
you could only love me!"

"I _dare_ not." Then, as though sorry for these words, she holds out her
hands to him, and says, with a quick smile, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore
art thou Romeo?"

"I wish I knew," returns he sadly. "Yet if I were sure of one thing I
should not despair. Monica, tell me you don't like Ryde."

"I can't," says Monica. "He is very kind to me always. I am sure I ought
to like him."

"How has he been kind to you?"

"Oh, in many ways."

"He has brought you a cup of somebody else's tea, I suppose, and has
probably trotted after you with a camp-stool; is that kindness?"

"If one is hot or tired, yes."

"You are one of the most grateful specimen of your sex. I wish there was
anything for which you might be grateful to me. But I am not great at
the _petits soins_ business."

"I shouldn't have thought so this afternoon," says Monica, maliciously,
"when you were happy with Olga Bohun. But see, the moon has risen quite
above the elms. I must go."

"Not yet. There is something else. When am I to see you again?--when?"

"That is as fate wills it."

"_You_ are my fate. Will it, then, and say to-morrow."

"No, no!" exclaims she, releasing her hands from his, "I cannot indeed.
I _must_ not. In being here with you now I am doing wrong, and am
betraying the two people in the world who are most kind to me. How shall
I look into their eyes to-morrow? No; I will not promise to meet you
anywhere--_ever_."

"How tender you are with them, and with me how cruel!"

"You have many joys in your life, but they how few!"

"You are wrong there. The world has grown useless to me since I met you.
You are my one joy, and you elude me; therefore pity me too."

"Who made you so gracious a courtier?" asks she, with a little shrug of
her rounded shoulders.

"Now you cast scorn upon me," says Desmond, half angrily, and as he says
it the thought of Kit's word _flout_ comes to her, and she smiles. It is
an idle thought, yet it