I am certain I knew quite a lot about love at fourteen and that I was quite as much in love with Beatrice then as any impassioned adult could be, and that Beatrice was, in her way, in love with me. It is part of the decent and useful pretences of our world that children of the age at which we were, think nothing, feel nothing, know nothing of love. It is wonderful what people the English are for keeping up pretences. But indeed I cannot avoid telling that Beatrice and I talked of love and kissed and embraced one another. I recall something of one talk under the overhanging bushes of the shrubbery—I on the park side of the stone wall, and the lady of my worship a little inelegantly astride thereon. Inelegantly do I say? you should have seen the sweet imp as I remember her. Just her poise on the wall comes suddenly clear before me, and behind her the light various branches of the bushes of the shrubbery that my feet might not profane, and far away and high behind her, dim and stately, the cornice of the great façade of Bladesover rose against the dappled sky. Our talk must have been serious and business-like, for we were discussing my social position. “I don’t love Archie,” she had said, _apropos_ of nothing; and then in a whisper, leaning forward with the hair about her face, “I love _you!_” But she had been a little pressing to have it clear that I was not and could not be a servant. “You’ll never be a servant—ever!” I swore that very readily, and it is a vow I have kept by nature. “What will you be?” said she. I ran my mind hastily over the professions. “Will you be a soldier?” she asked. “And be bawled at by duffers? No fear!” said I. “Leave that to the plough-boys.” “But an officer?” “I don’t know,” I said, evading a shameful difficulty. “I’d rather go into the navy.” “Wouldn’t you like to fight?” “I’d like to fight,” I said. “But a common soldier it’s no honour to have to be told to fight and to be looked down upon while you do it, and how could I be an officer?” “Couldn’t you be?” she said, and looked at me doubtfully; and the spaces of the social system opened between us. Then, as became a male of spirit, I took upon myself to brag and lie my way through this trouble. I said I was a poor man, and poor men went into the navy; that I “knew” mathematics, which no army officer did; and I claimed Nelson for an exemplar, and spoke very highly of my outlook upon blue water. “He loved Lady Hamilton,” I said, “although she _was_ a lady—and I will love you.” We were somewhere near that when the egregious governess became audible, calling “Beeee-âtrice! Beeee-e-âtrice!” “Snifty beast!” said my lady, and tried to get on with the conversation; but that governess made things impossible. “Come here!” said my lady suddenly, holding out a grubby hand; and I went very close to her, and she put her little head down upon the wall until her black fog of hair tickled my cheek.