hind.

"I couldn't say it with you lying there and looking at me," said Peter.
"Nobody ever made a proposal to a lady in a steamer chair unless he was
in another and the deck was level."

"Peter," she said gravely, "don't make fun."

Peter shook back the lock of hair he encouraged to tumble into his eyes.
It was his small affectation. It kept him at one with his artistic
brotherhood.

"I am rejected," he said, and do what he might, he announced it
exultingly, and not in the least with the dignity he would have admired
in the lady who had refused him. But at that moment Peter had had enough
of dignity and the outer form of things. He wanted to be himself, light
or sad, bad or good, and speak the truth as the moment revealed it to
him. "But I am rejected," he continued, when she looked at him in a
quick reproof, "turned down, jilted, smashed into a cocked hat. And I
came just as quick as I could. Rose--"

"Don't!" she warned him. "Don't say that, Peter."

"Just as quick as I could get here without running--I couldn't run,
there were so many pretty things to look at--to tell you, to beg of
you"--Peter's voice broke. He was behaving badly to conceal how much he
was moved. "I came to offer it to you," he said seriously, in a low
tone. "Not what was given back to me, but something else, so much better
you couldn't speak of 'em in the same day. When I think of what might
be, it's all light and color--and the leaves of the wood moving. It's a
great big dream, Rose, and you fit into it. You fit into the dream." He
was intoxicated with youth and life. She was not sure whether it was
with her.

"I hope you haven't quarreled," she said soberly. She wished she might
recall him. "But if you have and are patient--"

Peter could not let her go on. He put out his quick, clever hands in an
eager gesture, as if he pushed something away.

"Ah," he said, "I don't want to be patient! I want to be rash. I don't
want anything back. I want something new and beautiful. I want to tell
you a million things in a minute--chiefly how much I love you."

His voice had deepened. It swept her on apace, in spite of herself,
because it was like Osmond's. For a moment she felt the kinship between
them, the same swift blood, the picturesque betrayals. There was
something at the heart of each that was dear to her, and Peter, for the
moment, speaking in the sunshine with her eyes upon him, was also the
voice out of the dark. But she had nevertheles