While they were talking, they had moved away from the populous Broad Walk and were wandering now through a grove of elms. Mary looking round realized that they were as much alone together as if they were in the country. Yet not for anything would she have been anywhere else, not for anything would she have missed this new music in the twittering of the sparrows overhead, this fresh glow in the grass, this sudden accord of herself with the Spring. "I ought really to be going home," she murmured. "I only came out to give my little dog a run." "See how much he is enjoying himself on the grass. I could never have the heart to deprive him of a moment's pleasure, Mademoiselle. I should indeed be _ingrat_." They were wandering deeper into the green heart of the Gardens. Mary, looking over her shoulder, saw the houses of Kensington lose themselves in a mist of bare boughs, heard the traffic sound more faintly, ceased to feel the slightest desire to solve the riddle of the universe, and threw all the responsibility of her behavior upon Fate. "I've felt for a long time that something was about to happen," she told herself deliberately without being the least aware of inconsistency, who only half an hour ago was feeling drearily that nothing was going to happen. What nice hands Pierre had ... she pulled herself up for a moment, but a moment later asked herself indignantly by what other name she should think of him. He had always been Pierre. Why did he keep staring sideways at her without speaking? She must be careful to appear utterly unconscious of his glances. "I'm trying to tell myself that you are grown up," Pierre said. It was so easy to think of him as Pierre. Monsieur Menard would sound so affected, and Mr. Menard would sound ridiculous. "I am grown up. I'm twenty." What would Grandmamma say if she could hear her? Yet after all he must know within a year or two how old she was, so why pretend? "I am twenty-seven." "I think you look older than that," Mary said judicially. "I should have guessed you were thirty, if I had not known that you were scarcely seventeen when you went off to the war." Mary felt that it was important to impress on Pierre how much she was aware of that boy and girl friendship. It would never do for him to think that she would have allowed herself to walk with him under these trees because he was what he was now. No sooner had she decided this than she felt a sharp desire to glance sideways at him, to see more exactly what he was indeed now. She tried hard to resist the impulse, but the longer she resisted the more urgent it became, and thus their eyes met. She blushed in confusion, but an instant afterward turned pale with emotion. "Mademoiselle, you are ill," he cried. "Sit here awhile. The sun is shining. You will not catch cold."