"I must be going back. They will miss me."
"Don't you think I shall miss you, Beauty?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought."
"If you knew how miserable I'll be after you have left me, you'd kiss me
once before you go."
"Don't ask me, I can't--I really can't, Mr. Jonathan."
"Hang Mr. Jonathan and all that appertains to him! What's to become of
me, condemned to this solitude, if you refuse to become kind to me? By
Jove, if it wasn't for my mother, I'd ask you to marry me!"
"I don't want to marry you," she responded haughtily, and completed her
triumph. Something stronger than passion--that _something_ compounded
partly of moral fibre, partly of a phlegmatic temperament, guided her
at the critical moment. His words had been casual, but her reception of
them charged them with seriousness almost before he was aware. A passing
impulse was crystallized by the coldness of her manner into a permanent
desire.
"If I were free to do it, I'd make you want to," he said.
She moved from him, walking rapidly into the deeper shelter of the
willows. The autumn sunlight, shining through the leafless boughs, cast
a delicate netting of shadows over the brilliant fairness of her body.
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