Major Harold Reith looked as if he could not; a more woe-begone looking gentleman of six-feet-two one could hardly expect to find. The most absurd part of it was that he had been so very nearly confident. The lady had been so kind--so very much kinder, perhaps, than he supposed, but for that she had her reasons. Then her uncle, old Geoffrey Hovenden, had been not only on his side but so delightfuly sanguine. When the major expressed a doubt as to what the lady's sentiments might be, Mr. Hovenden had pooh-poohed it. "Don't talk like a schoolboy, Reith; you know better than that; you admit that the girl likes you--you can't expect to be told how much till you give her a chance." Now he had given her a chance, and if he had not been told how much, she had at least endeavoured to make it clear that it was not as much as he wanted. Her answer to the question he had asked put an end to the little remaining hope he had left. The proposal had been made in the wood. He had gone for a stroll with her with the intention of finding an opportunity to ask her to be his wife; being conceivably quite aware of his intentions, she had given him one. It was the commencement of April. Spring promised to be early that year. The wood was carpeted with primroses. She had been picking them as they walked, and was arranging her nosegay as she talked. "Of course, on the face of it, no one has a right to ask a girl such a question; she might be consumed by a secret passion which was not reciprocated, which she knew never would be, and yet which she was aware would render it impossible that she should ever listen to another; by another I mean, for instance, you." "Is yours a case of a secret passion?" She had dropped some of her primroses; he stooped to pick them up for her; a great bunch of them she had, almost as large as her two hands would hold. "Thanks; no, I can't say that mine is; yet all the same--I've a fellow-feeling for you." "That's very good of you; but in what sense have you what you call a fellow-feeling, and to what extent does it go?" "It goes all the way. There go some of these primroses again; they are such droppy things." "If you really mean what you say then I am a very happy man." "You may be or you mayn't; happiness is often largely a question of temperament. For example, I ought to be a very unhappy girl, but I'm not; somehow unhappiness doesn't seem to come easy to me." "You are very fortunate; what cause have you for unhappiness? I should have thought that there were few people who had less. Has it anything to do with the imagination?" "There's only one thing I want in this world, and it looks as if I were as little likely to get it as if it were the moon; you may call that imagination, but it's a fact." "And what may that one thing be?"