She wished he would not say the actual word, for it made her realize herself in his arms, and brought back in a flood all her shyness. "I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy. So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals. "Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her love-affair unhappy?" "Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline. "You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You and I mustn't have secrets." "I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say that, Guy?" "I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you know about me--really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's miniature." "Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that." Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce. "Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?" "Oh, don't tell me about them, don't tell me about them," Pauline murmured in a low hurried voice. She felt that if Guy said another word she would run from him in a wild terror that would never let her rest, that would urge her out over the down's edge in desperate descent. "I don't want to tell you about them," said Guy. "But, they've stood so at the back of my thoughts whenever I have been with you; and yesterday at Miss Verney's, I had a sense of guilt as if I were responsible in some way for her unhappiness. I had to tell you, Pauline." She sat silent under the song of the larks that in streams of melodious light poured through their wings. "Why do you say nothing?" he asked. "Oh, don't let's talk about it any more. Promise me never to talk about it. Oh, Guy, why 'of course'? Why 'of course'?" "Of course?" he repeated. "'Of course they meant nothing.' That seems so dreadful to me. Perhaps you won't understand." "Dear Pauline, isn't that 'of course' the reason they torment me?" he said. "It isn't kind of you to assume anything else." She forgave him in that instant; and before she knew what she had done had put her hand impulsively on his. To the Pauline who made that gesture he was no more the unapproachable lover but someone whom she had wounded involuntarily. "My heart of hearts, my adored Pauline."