"Still nothing did remain when there seemed a chance of eighteen being taken away from forty-two; absolutely nothing at all." Fay laughed again, a little gurgling laugh of pure delight. "How dreadfully clever you are! If you go on being as clever as that you'll have a headache, or softening of the brain, or something of that kind. You make me quite anxious about you." "But though I know that if eighteen were taken away from forty-two nothing could remain--at least, nothing that would make life worth living--I still can't make forty-two equal to eighteen. Eighteen is so much more than forty-two in every dimension that matters--in youth and health and joy and vigour and everything else that counts." "Your language is charming, Sir Reggie, but your arithmetic leaves much to be desired." "Sir me no sirs, if you love me. Reggie, plain Reggie, an' it please you. But, sweetheart, I have been struggling for months not to let you know that I love you, as I felt it was not fair to ask a young girl like you to marry a stuffy old fogey like me." "Very thoughtful of you! As I said, I have noticed concealment like a worm i' the bud feeding on your damask cheek for some time, but it didn't bluff me. When did you fall in love with me?" "The first moment that I saw you." Fay nodded her head--as well as circumstances would permit it. "I'm not surprised. That large black hat is very becoming." "And when did you fall in love with me, my darling?" I asked. "Not the first moment that I saw you." I laughed. "I didn't expect you would." "Long, long before that: from Frankie's description of you." My face fell. "Oh, sweetheart, what a horrid way of falling in love." "It wasn't horrid at all, silly--and anyway it was my way. From Frankie's letters I had built up a sort of combination of King Arthur and Sir Philip Sidney and Henry Esmond and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and had called it You and fallen in love with it. And of course I felt sure that when I met you you would fall far short of what I had imagined, and so the rest of my life would be one bitter regret and longing for a lost ideal. You know the sort of thing: just what a girl would thoroughly enjoy. And then when I got to know the real You, you were so much nicer than anything I had ever imagined that all my unfulfilled plans were quite upset. And so instead of breaking my heart, as I had intended, I lost it." "You darling!" I whispered, covering her pretty curls with kisses. "And now, since we are on the catechising task, would you mind telling me what stopped concealment's meal, and why your damask cheek was suddenly, as you might say, 'off' the menu?" Fay asked. I told her the simple truth. "Because both Annabel and Arthur said that you had a right to know that I loved you, and that it was for you to decide whether I was too old for you." Fay drew herself slightly out of my arms. "How very interfering of them!" she said shortly.