“A visitor to see you, miss,” cried she, wheezy at the high climb; admitted the handsome youth; and forthwith took herself off, descending to her household furbishings and area gossip. Betty, rising from her chair, set aside some needlework, and turned to greet. She saw the youth standing before the closed door, his back to it. She put her white hands upon her bosom. “Noll!” she whispered; and a glad smile of wonder was in her eyes; and the red blood flushed her cheek and lip. Noll went to her and put his arms about her, and kissed her upon the mouth. And he said never a word. CHAPTER XL _Which, in Somewhat Indelicate Eavesdropping Fashion, hovers about a Trysting-Place, and Scandalously Repeats a Private Conversation_ In the wintry twilight that came hazing softly down upon the city, and cast its dusky shadow over St. James’s Park, sat Noll on a bench, and by his side was Betty Modeyne. He sat stooped forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and gazed at the girl’s face lovingly. “Thou dearest heart!” said he; and she reached out her dainty gloved hand and took his within her slender fingers. “Betty,” said he, “you have brought delight to me again--the day and night are full of song and all the world is grown musical--you paint the very greys of life with colour. I am glad to be alive--for you feed my eyes with dreams of you and my senses with the fragrance of you. It would be enough to be alive, but you have filled me with eagerness, my bones with strength, my body with will.... I cannot sit idle longer, nor be content with half-life.... You must marry me, dear heart; and we will go to Paris and begin living splendidly and a-new.” “Hush, Noll,” said she, smiling down upon him; and she stroked his hand. “We are so young, and--I am so glad----” He laughed for love of her: “You would not have us grow old in pretty nothingness, thou dearest of all born things,” he said impatiently--“like the Man of Pallid Ideals and his little faded poetess, dreaming themselves away in a fragile world of dreams! My Betty, it cannot be.” She shook her head provokingly. He pshawed: “We do not live by denials alone, you sweet dreamer,” said he, feeding his eyes upon her eyes--“we are here to live our life--not to shirk the living.... Our feet are planted on the dear brown earth, and only so may we raise our heads amongst the stars.... They prate of other worlds who themselves after all only judge of other worlds by the glorious life that their dullard eyes so scorn in this.... They hold out heavens to us! but what trumpet blast of all the sepulchral souls in heaven shall stir a man like the touch of your dear lips?” “Sweetheart,” said she--“I did not say I did not love your lips.” He laughed quietly, kissing her gloved fingers: “Are not your very hands exquisitely fashioned but to steal away a man’s heart, my Betty? Why does your white self hold me enthralled unless it be that I may love you--not the vague image of you?”