"Great heavens, what an armour!" he cried. "I suppose, after all, I did feel a trifle like a tenor when I first came here, but you have chilled it all out of me. Let's talk upon indifferent topics." But he started abruptly to his feet. "No," he said, "let us not talk upon indifferent topics. I am not brave, I assure you, and it--it might be too much for me." He held out his hand. "Good-bye." "You are going?" "Yes, I am going. Really I didn't think how it would bore you for me to come around here and croak in this fashion." "And you are not coming back for a long, long time?" "Not for a long, long time." He mimicked her tone. "I have the three violets now, you know, and you must remember that I took the third one even when you flung it at my head. That will remind you how submissive I was in my devotion. When you recall the two others it will remind you of what a fool I was. Dare say you won't miss three violets." "No," she said. "Particularly the one you flung at my head. That violet was certainly freely--given." "I didn't fling it at your head." She pondered for a time with her eyes upon the floor. Then she murmured, "No more freely--given than the one I gave you that night--that night at the inn." "So very good of you to tell me so!" Her eyes were still upon the floor. "Do you know," said Hawker, "it is very hard to go away and leave an impression in your mind that I am a fool? That is very hard. Now, you do think I am a fool, don't you?" She remained silent. Once she lifted her eyes and gave him a swift look with much indignation in it. "Now you are enraged. Well, what have I done?" It seemed that some tumult was in her mind, for she cried out to him at last in sudden tearfulness: "Oh, do go! Go! Please! I want you to go!" Under this swift change Hawker appeared as a man struck from the sky. He sprang to his feet, took two steps forward, and spoke a word which was an explosion of delight and amazement. He said, "What?" With heroic effort she slowly raised her eyes until, alight with anger, defiance, unhappiness, they met his eyes. Later, she told him that he was perfectly ridiculous.