"I do not," he said, folding her in his arms and embracing her; "I could never have loved any other woman than you, I can never love another. So you see, my dear, you are not quite logical. There is one thing in which we should find no beauty in change." They strolled through the woods, exchanging fond endearments, pausing often in silence to drink in the sweetness and the beauty of the time and scene. They listened to the notes of the nightingale, and recalled the remembrances of the night when Kingsley came to Nansie in the caravan. "I have the daisies you threw up to my little window," said Nansie. "We listened to the nightingale then." Some few minutes afterwards Nansie spoke to Kingsley of his mother. "When your affairs are settled," she said, "do you not think that she would help you to make a start in life? You seldom speak of your mother, Kingsley." "I think a great deal of her and of my father," said Kingsley, "and I have hidden something from you which I will tell you of presently. It is wrong to have a secret from you, but I really did it because I felt it would distress you. Between my mother and me, my dear, there was never any very close tie. We had not those home ties which I think must be necessary to bind parents and children together. Since I was a young child, I have always been away for ten months or so every year at school or college, and frequently in vacation I had no house in London or elsewhere in which to spend my holidays. My father, engrossed in his business, would be absent from England sometimes for many months, and my mother would often accompany him. Then you must understand that my parents are as one. What my father says is law, and my mother obeys his instructions implicitly. She is entirely and completely under his control, and has the blindest worship of him. She cannot believe that he could do anything that was not just and right, and if he says a thing is so, it is so, without question or contradiction from her. That tells fatally against me in this difference between my father and me. In her judgment--although she does not exercise it, but submits unmurmuringly to his--he is absolutely right in the course he has taken, and I am absolutely wrong. During the last week I spent at home my mother said many times to me, 'Kingsley, be guided by your father. For your own sake and ours do not thwart him.' I tried to reason, to argue with her, but she shook her head and would not listen, saying continually, 'I know all; your father has told me everything.' I half believe if she had only listened to me, and consented to see you, as I begged of her, that there would be some hope; but she would not. Well, my dear, since your dear father's funeral I have written to my mother." "Yes, Kingsley," said Nansie, looking anxiously at him. "No answer. I wrote to my father, too." "Did he not reply, Kingsley?"