"I believe I ought to say that I won't, but----" Then he held out his hand, "I understand--apart from everything else in the world--what this love of ours--" her hand trembled in his for a second, "means to us--both. I will go away for--yes! for two months, and give you time to think. Then I will come back. Good-bye, my dear. I can only say it once more--I love you." For an instant as he left her she stood still, her lip quivering; then she called to him: "Come back, please! I want to give you this." She held out the bunch of winter heliotrope which had been fastened in her coat; its faint scent had been in the air as he had sat beside her holding her hand. It was too much; the passion he had held back, not unwillingly for so long, mastered him. "This is foolishness," he cried, striding towards her, "you do love me--why can you not say so--you might at least tell the truth." Something in her face arrested him. "The truth," she echoed, "I have told you the truth. I think I do love you, and I am sorry, and vexed, and angry." Her clear eyes were looking through his as if she could see into his innermost thought. "But I will not marry you. I am afraid. Do you understand what that means to me? I am afraid of myself, and for you, for you deserve something better." Suddenly she stooped, kissed the withering flowers she held, dropped them at his feet and was off like a mist wreath down the hill. He did not attempt to follow her. He simply sat down again on the stone where he had been sitting before, and swore to God that sooner or later he would marry her. And then he fell to thinking of how once or twice in his life before he had caught a glimpse, as he had just now caught one, of that "something better," beyond the Dream of Life. Once, when he was a boy watching the trail of silvery bubbles left behind it in the brown stream by a water-rat as it swam. Once again as a young man, when he had paid half a crown for a penny bunch of violets, and something in their sweetness had made him add half a sovereign to their price and go on his way. Then the present reasserted itself. He could not possibly take this for his answer, he must wait till the shock of Gwen's death had faded, until Aura became accustomed to the idea of her own love for him--for that she did love him he had little doubt. It was briefly her love which had frightened her, quaint compound as she was of nature and culture. He would leave her to think it out for two months. During that time he also would have time to make up his mind concerning many things. He was becoming dimly conscious that life was resolving itself into the spending of money in order to escape from the responsibilities of having money, into the fighting of money by money.