‘Fare thee well, dear Brion.’ ‘Is that all, dear Joan?’ ‘Why, what can I have more to say but to thank thee?’ ‘Thanks are for lips; yet the sweetest are without words. For what thou hast taught me I owe thee a thousand kisses.’ ‘Nay, the saving grace of an error is in the teaching one not to repeat it. If I know my peril, and avoid it, will you, who love me, lead me into it again? That is not to be my knight.’ ‘Dear Joan, forgive me.’ ‘Yes, Brion.’ They parted, with a sweet gravity. Were they not lovely serious, the pretty things, and did they not deserve the best a kind Fate could allot them? CHAPTER XII. IL PENSEROSO Once more the two sat together in the high bower overlooking the glen. No churlish weather had, in all the short course of their idyll, marred its perfection, and still the sun shone and the air breathed honied upon their happy meetings. But on this occasion the girl was pensive and quiet as Brion had never known her to be before, and for some reason the fact disturbed him. She was never anything but physically tranquil--a pretty pacific creature whose graces were all on the side of soft rounded ease and caressing movements; yet her young brain lacked nothing in bright activity, and it was her present failure to respond in kind to his livelier mood which filled the boy with an inexplicable feeling like foreboding. He was made so uneasy at last by her unresponsiveness that he was driven to rally her upon it:-- ‘What ails you, Joan, that you are so silent?’ She did not answer for a moment, but sat looking down sidelong, idly plucking at the blades of grass. ‘Joan?’ he persisted. She just raised her lids in a swift glance at him, then drooped them again, and a flush came to her cheek. ‘We have been good friends, have we not, Brion?’ she said, her face still half averted from him. ‘Have been, Joan! Why not are, and will be?’ Her fingers grew busier at their plucking. ‘How can I tell? Maids must come to marry.’ He started and sat quite rigid, as if some paralysing thing had stung him. His lips repeated the word mechanically, as he stared before him:-- ‘To marry?’ ‘It is the common lot, you know,’ she murmured. He made a desperate effort to steady his wits and his voice. ‘But you are so young.’ She gave a great sigh: ‘Heigho! it is age that lacks suitors.’ ‘You have a suitor, Joan?’ ‘My father says so.’ ‘And you?’ ‘What is there for me to say?’ He turned on her with a sudden violence. A heat had sprung to his face. ‘And you never told me? Is this to be the end between us, then?’ Her hand at the grass was busier than ever. ‘That is not for me to answer.’