She might--and probably would, since men and women invariably misunderstand one another--believe his delicate reticences to be merely the indications of a waning interest, and construe knightly chivalry into mere indifference. If he made love to her--who could not get away from the love-making without destroying that which made it possible--he would be a presuming cad. If he didn't, what could she think but that he regretted his bargain? As he sat there opposite his princess, alone with her among the thickly thinning crowd, he wondered whether out of this any happiness could come to them. When he had proposed the elopement he had meant marriage; the incurable temperamental generosity which had prompted him to offer her the help of the escape, on her own terms, now seemed to him the grossest folly. Yet how could he have held the pistol to her head, saying, "No marriage, no elopement." Her voice broke his reverie. "I am very tired," she said. "I think I'll say good night. Do you mind?" He almost fancied that her lip trembled a little, like a child's who is unhappy. "Of course you're tired," he said, "and, I say, you don't mind my not having talked for the last few minutes? I've been thinking of you--nothing else but you." "Yes," said she, "it all looks very different here, as you say. Perhaps it will look more different even than this to-morrow. Shall we start on our tramp to-morrow--or shall I just go back and let's forget we ever tried to do something out of a book? I think you will tell me honestly to-morrow whether you think I had better go back." "To-morrow," he said, looking into her eyes, "I will tell you everything you wish to hear. We'll spend to-morrow in telling each other things. Shall we? Good night, Princess. Sleep well, and dream of the open road." "I shall probably," said the princess, "dream of my aunts." IX THE MEDWAY "IF you had a map and I could put my finger on any place I chose, I should open my eyes the least bit in the world and put my finger on the Thames," she said at the breakfast-table, where she had for the first time sat opposite to him and poured his coffee, looking as demurely domestic as any haberdasher's wife of them all. "The Thames?" he said. "I know a river worth two of that. . . ." "A river that's worth two of the Thames must be the river of Paradise." "So it is," he assured her, "and probably the Thames is infested by your relations. For a serious and secret conference such as we propose to ourselves there is no place like the Medway." She had thought the Medway to be nothing but mud and barges, and said so. "Ah, that's below Maidstone. Above-- But you'll see. Wear a shady hat and bring that conspirator-looking cloak you wore last night--the fine weather can't possibly last forever. Twenty minutes for breakfast, half an hour for a complete river toilette, and we catch the ten-seventeen from Cannon Street, easily."