"It would be too late," said Daisy, with a short laugh. Then, suddenly changing her tone, she cried, "Do you imagine that, in what I have just said, I was spelling for you to make me an offer? Do you imagine that I would so demean myself? Do you think that I have no pride? I can tell you, I should feel I was doing quite as great an honour to your family by coming into it as they could possibly do to me by receiving me into it. Do you imagine that I was not merely going calmly to wait until it pleased your highness to throw the handkerchief in my direction, but that I was actually making signs to attract your attention to my eager desire for preferment?" "Daisy, Daisy," interrupted Paul, "what are you saying?" "Simply the truth; I am speaking out what we both of us know to be true. There is no good shilly-shallying any longer this way, Paul Douglas; we are neither of us so very childlike, we are both of us out of our teens, and we live in a world where Strephon and Daphne will find themselves horribly out of place." There was a pause for a few moments, and then Paul said in a low voice: "You must pardon me, Daisy, if I don't answer you straight at once and to the purpose. It is rather a facer for a fellow who has gone away and left a girl, as he imagines, very much attached to him, and certainly most loving and affectionate in her words and manner, to find her, on his return, perfectly changed, and talking about being practical and rational, and that kind of thing. I daresay I was a fool; I daresay you thought I was giving myself airs when I talked about my family, and kept in this secluded part of the Park in order that we might not run the risk of meeting anybody I knew. God knows I didn't intend so, child; God knows I would have done nothing that I thought could have wounded your feelings in the very slightest degree. You say that if I had spoken to you before I left town about marrying you, matters would have stood differently. The truth is, until I went out of town, until I was far away from you and knew I was beyond your reach, until I felt that never-ceasing want of your society and companionship, that ever-present desire to hear your voice and take your hand and look into your darling eyes, I did not know how much I was in love with you. I know it now, Daisy, I feel it all now, and the idea of having to pass the remainder of my life without you drives me mad. You won't let it come to this, Daisy--oh, my own darling one, you won't let it come to this!" His voice trembled as he spoke these last words, and he was strangely agitated. There was real pity, and perhaps a little look of love, in Daisy's eyes, but she only said: