The path was
strewn with rose petals and the air seemed fuller than ever of a fresh
and delicate fragrance. At the end of the garden, a little gate led
into the orchard. Side by side they passed beneath the trees.
"Tell me," he begged in a low tone, "about this lover of yours!"
"There is so little to tell," she answered. "He is a member of the firm
who publish books for my father. He is quite kind to us both. He used
to come down here more often, even, than he does now, and one night he
asked my father whether he might speak to me."
"And your father?"
"My father was very much pleased," she continued. "We have little money
and father is not very strong. He told me that it had taken a weight
off his mind."
"How often does he come?" Burton asked.
"He was here last Sunday week."
"Last Sunday week! And you call him your lover!"
"No, I have not called him that," she reminded him gently. "He is not
that sort of man. Only I think that he is the person whom I shall
marry--some day."
"I am sure that you were beginning to like me," he insisted.
She turned and looked at him--at his pale, eager face with the hollow
eyes, the tremulous mouth--a curiously negative and wholly indescribable
figure, yet in some dim sense impressive through certain unspelt
suggestions of latent force.
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