My injuries were much more showy than serious, and I could have been taken to Lady Grove next day, but Beatrice would not permit that, and kept me at Bedley Corner three clear days. In the afternoon of the second day she became extremely solicitous for the proper aeration of the nurse, packed her off for an hour in a brisk rain, and sat by me alone. I asked her to marry me. All the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to eloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages, and with some little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was feverish and in pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long with regard to her became now an unendurable impatience. “Comfortable?” she asked. “Yes.” “Shall I read to you?” “No. I want to talk.” “You can’t. I’d better talk to you.” “No,” I said, “I want to talk to you.” She came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. “I don’t—I don’t want you to talk to me,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t talk.” “I get few chances—of you.” “You’d better not talk. Don’t talk now. Let me chatter instead. You ought not to talk.” “It isn’t much,” I said. “I’d rather you didn’t.” “I’m not going to be disfigured,” I said. “Only a scar.” “Oh!” she said, as if she had expected something quite different. “Did you think you’d become a sort of gargoyle?” “L’Homme qui Rit!—I didn’t know. But that’s all right. Jolly flowers those are!” “Michaelmas daisies,” she said. “I’m glad you’r not disfigured, and those are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to have been, by all the rules of the game.” She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move. “Are we social equals?” I said abruptly. She stared at me. “Queer question,” she said. “But are we?” “H’m. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a courtesy Baron who died—of general disreputableness, I believe—before his father—? I give it up. Does it matter?” “No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me.” She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her. “Damn these bandages!” I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage. She roused herself to her duties as nurse. “What are you doing? Why are you trying to sit up? Sit down! Don’t touch your bandages. I told you not to talk.” She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders and pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I had raised to my face. “I told you not to talk,” she whispered close to my face. “I asked you not to talk. Why couldn’t you do as I asked you?” “You’ve been avoiding me for a month,” I said. “I know. You might have known. Put your hand back—down by your side.” I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. “I asked you,” she repeated, “not to talk.” My eyes questioned her mutely.