Then a smile, wonderfully sweet and provocative, parted her lips, and she beckoned him to a grassy slope beneath one of the oldest trees, where little tufts of wild thyme grew thickly, filling the air with fragrance. "Come and sit beside me here," she said--"We have the day to ourselves--Dad said so,--and we can talk as long as we like. You ask me what I know?--not much indeed! But I'll tell you what the Sieur Amadis has told me!--if you care to hear it!" "I'm not sure that I do," he answered, dubiously. She laughed. "Oh, Robin!--how ungrateful you are! You ought to be so pleased! If you really loved me as much as you say, the mere sound of my voice ought to fill you with ecstasy! Yes, really! Come, be good!" And she sat down on the grass, glancing up at him invitingly. He flung himself beside her, and she extended her little white hand to him with a pretty condescension. "There!--you may hold it!" she said, as he eagerly clasped it--"Yes, you may! Now, if the Sieur Amadis had been allowed to hold the hand of the lady he loved he would have gone mad with joy!" "Much good he'd have done by going mad!" growled Robin, with an affectation of ill-humour--"I'd rather be sane,--sane and normal." She bent her smiling eyes upon him. "Would you? Poor Robin! Well, you will be--when you settle down--" "Settle down?" he echoed--"How? What do you mean?" "Why, when you settle down with a wife, and--shall we say six children?" she queried, merrily--"Yes, I think it must be six! Like the Sieur Amadis! And when you forget that you ever sat with me under the trees, holding my hand--so!" The lovely, half-laughing compassion of her look nearly upset his self-possession. He drew closer to her side. "Innocent!" he exclaimed, passionately--"if you would only listen to reason--" She shook her head. "I never could!" she declared, with an odd little air of penitent self-depreciation--"People who ask you to listen to reason are always so desperately dull! Even Priscilla!--when she asks you to 'listen to reason,' she's in the worst of tempers! Besides, Robin, dear, we shall have plenty of chances to 'listen to reason' when we grow older,--we're both young just now, and a little folly won't hurt us. Have patience with me!--I want to tell you some quite unreasonable--quite abnormal things about love! May I?" "Yes--if _I_ may too!" he answered, kissing the hand he held, with lingering tenderness. The soft colour flew over her cheeks,--she smiled. "Poor Robin!" she said--"You deserve to be happy and you will be!--not with me, but with some one much better, and ever so much prettier! I can see you as the master of Briar Farm--such a sweet home for you and your wife, and all your little children running about in the fields among the buttercups and daisies--a pretty sight, Robin!--I shall think of it often when--when I am far away!" He was about to utter a protest,--she stopped him by a gesture. "Hush!" she said. And there was a moment's silence.