She shook her head. "No duties, at any rate." "And so you think," he asked, his eyes fixed upon her changing features, "that I should go back to my old way of life--of a century ago?" "Of course you must!" But she was not so rude as to tell him what a very foolish question this was. Still it was, was it not? "So I will, or to something like it, and yet very unlike. But not alone. Joan, will you come with me? If I have known you but a month, I have learned to love your truth and goodness and you, Joan, so that if I go away alone, to return to the old life would be bitterly impossible. You have spoiled that; you must make for me a fresh life in its place. Do you remember you told me that when we knew one another we might be better friends? I have come to know you better, but we cannot be friends. We must be something more, more even than lovers, Joan--husband and wife, if you can like me enough." It was not an unmanly way of putting it, and he was in earnest. But so quiet, so self-restrained was his manner that it savored of coldness. The girl whose hand he held while he spoke had no such thought. Her face was turned from him. She was gazing over the wall across the paddock where Maggie's mare was peaceably and audibly feeding, and so at the Blore Ash on its mimic hill, every bough and drooping branchlet dark against the sunset sky; and this radiant in her eyes with a beauty its deepest glow had never held for her before. The sweetest joy was in her heart, and grief in her face. He had been worthy of himself and her love. While he spoke she told herself, not that some time she might love him, but that she had given him all her true heart already. And yet as he was worthy, so she must be worthy and do her part. "You have done me a great honor," she said at last, drawing away her hand from his grasp, though she did not turn her face, "but it cannot be, Mr. Maitland. I am very grateful to you--I am indeed, and sorry." "Why can it not be?" he said shortly; startled, I am bound to say, and mortified. "Because of--of many things. One is that I should not make you happy, nor you me. I am not suited to your way of life. I am of the country, and I love to be free and unconstrained, while you are of the town. Oh, we should not get on at all! Perhaps you would not be ashamed of me as your wife, but you might be, and I could not endure the chance even of it. There," she added, with a laugh in which a woman's ear might have detected the suppression of a sob, "is one sober reason where none can be needed." "Is that your only reason?" She was picking the mortar out of the wall. "Oh, dear me, no! I have a hundred, but that is a sufficient one," she answered almost carelessly, flirting a scrap of lime from the wall with her forefinger. "And you have been playing with me all this time!" cried he, obtusely enraged by her flippancy. "Not knowingly, not knowingly, indeed!" "Can you tell me that you were not aware that I loved you?"