Nurse Brannan was going to the stake, perhaps. She was ready at any time to do all sorts of disagreeable things without making any fuss about them. 'Would you mind walking this way?' he said, and he led Lucy unresisting up the lane into that narrow part, past the posts, between the high hedges, that shut them out from all curious eyes. 'I have come to ask you a question,' he said, speaking low, with a little catch in his voice, 'and I want an answer before I go back to work. The Tripos begins on Monday. Will it be worth while to go in for it?' 'What do you mean?' she said; but she knew very well what he meant. 'I think you know what I mean, Miss Rae--Lucy. I think you know more about me than any other woman. If you will tell me I have anything to work for, I will go back and work, and--and some day I will come to you again; but if--if there is nothing to work for, I shall go down to-day.' 'You would not throw up your chance?' she said. She was quite pale, and she was trembling all over. 'I should certainly throw it up. What would be the use of a degree to me with _that_ before me? There is only one thing, Lucy, to stand between me and it. My sentence must come from your lips. Am I to go back and work?' No one looking at him standing there in the sunshine, with that smile on his face, would have dreamed the issue that hung on the girl's lips. She couldn't realize it herself; she could only gasp and tremble. He had quite taken her breath away. She would have given the world to run away without giving that fateful answer, but the lane was narrow, and he stood before her. 'Well,' he said, watching with his eager, questioning eyes the changes on her face, 'am I to go back to work?' What could she say? Her lips faltered, and the words would not come; again she tried, but his sentence lingered. There was a merle singing in the elm-tree above, and a thrush was calling for its mate, and the wood-pigeons were cooing softly in the orchard over the hedge; everything was so glad and happy and full of life and love on this May morning; every voice in nature was pleading for him. Her face was dreadfully pale, and her lips were quivering, and her heart was beating like a hammer. She looked up into his face with a strange white terror in her eyes, and she saw the scarf round his throat. It was the coloured striped scarf of his college, and he wore it twisted on that balmy morning round his throat. The sight of that scarf decided her. 'I think you must go back to work,' she said softly, with just a little wan smile. He caught her in his arms, to his heart, and kissed her on the forehead. 'God bless you, Lucy!' he said--'God bless you, darling!' The pressure of his arms, the strange, sweet pressure of his warm lips on her forehead, brought the blood back to her heart, to her cheeks, and she drew herself away, flushing scarlet.