He held her now in his arms, and she with a sigh yielded herself into his keeping. Soft she was and timid, like a bird which has fallen from the nest, and in the gloom he could still see her wide blue eyes and above the jangle of the chariot he could hear her whisper, "I love you, Amor, I love you." "My Phyllida." "Amor, dear, dear Amor." "'Tis not my name, dear one." "'Tis the name you told me." "My name is Vernon." "To me you will always be Amor. Amor means Love. I asked the Archdeacon and he told me that Amor meant Love." Vernon was taken outside of himself. As he kissed those lips more soft than the petals of flowers, the other lips he had known seemed cracked and dry. In the darkness, he felt her eyelashes upon his cheek as they drooped to a blush, and a passion of remorse swept over him. He would wed this child at the end of the journey. He would love her for ever. That was certain. Oh, yes, there was no doubt he would love her for ever. He had plucked this flower in a wanton moment, had thought to wear her for a scented month and fling her away. O execrable intent! "My Phyllida, my Phyllida! Why do you love me?" "Why do you love me?" Her hand nestled in his. "I don't know, because--because--oh, because I do love you, because you have driven me mad with your blue eyes and your hair and your lips. My Phyllida, my Phyllida!" Vernon was no longer conscious of acting. This was no scene set with chairs at appropriate angles. The raffish Mr. Francis Vernon of London, the clever Mr. Francis Vernon who vowed every woman had her price, Mr. Vernon the hero of half a hundred squalid intrigues was dead. Why should he not forget him, taking for his own that fortunate pseudonym which had set him as high as the angels? With a gesture of dismay, he drew from his cuff a greasy King of Hearts and spurned the dishonourable cardboard with his foot. "Amor!" "My dear! My lovely one! My heart!" "Once I climbed up a high hill at home in Hampshire." He held her more closely. "I climbed a hill and stared for a long while right into the sun. I was giddy. Amor! Amor! I feel now as I did when I stared for a long while into the sun." "Phyllida! Phyllida!" "You'll never not love me, Amor?" "Never, I swear it." "I could not bear you not to love me. Once I knew a young woman whose lover forsook her and she used to work woollen flowers all day long with a tambour frame, because she was working woollen flowers when he told her that he loved her, and she never did anything else all the years that we knew her; and, Amor, she is working them now, and oh, I'm afraid when I think of her working those woollen flowers."