me all your life?"

"You needn't rub it in," she said.

"Do you know why that is? It's because you are going to know me all your life. I'm perfectly certain of it. Somehow or other, it's true. We're going to be friends. I sha'n't need to say again how jolly it is of you to talk to me. We shall take all that as a matter of course. People aren't pitchforked into meetings like this for nothing. I'm glad I said that. I'm glad you were angry with me for saying it. If you hadn't I might just have gone away and not known till I got outside—and[31] then it would have been a deuce and all of a business to get hold of you again. But now I know. And you know, too. When shall I see you again? Never mind about forgiving me. Just tell me when I shall see you again. And then I'll go."

[31]

"You must be mad," was all she could find to say. She had furled her sunshade and was smoothing its bamboo ribs with pink fingers.

"You'll be able to find out whether I'm mad, you know, when you see me again. As a matter of fact—which seems maddest, when you meet some one you want to talk to, to go away without talking or to insist on talk and more talk? And you can't say you didn't want to talk to me, because you know you did. Look here, meet me to-morrow morning again—will you?"

"Certainly not."

"You'll be sorry if you don't. We're like two travelers who have collected all sorts of wonderful things in foreign countries. We long to show each other our collections—all the things we've thought and dreamed. If we'd been what you call introduced, perhaps we shouldn't have found this out. But as it is, we know it."

"Speak for yourself," she said.

"Thank you," he said, seriously. "I will. Will you sit down for ten minutes? This tree-root was[32] made for you to sit down on for ten minutes, and I will speak for myself."

[32]

"I can't," she said, and her voice—there was hurry in it, and indecision, but the ice had gone. "You must come at once for that ladder. It's getting more dangerous every moment. If any one saw you here there'd be an awful row."

"For you?"

"Yes, for me. Come on."

 Prev. P 16/170 next