A shiver thrills her from head to foot; the blue heavens darken above her head; the warm and fragrant air that rushes down the myrtle avenue sickens her almost to fainting. Passionate bliss is always closely allied to passionate pain. "'To be, or not to be!'" he questions softly, bending over the drooping form, though he feels very sure in his heart what the answer will be. She is silent, leaning more heavily on his arm, her face growing white and mournful. "Dear, am I to take silence for consent?" he persists, as though talking to a petulant child who is going to yield, he knows. "I asked you is it to be or not to be?" "_Not._" She outdoes his usual laconics in this specimen of brevity. It is fully a minute before he recovers from his astonishment enough to laugh: "Don't jest with me, Lulu, I am in earnest." "So am I." For answer he lifts her face and scrutinizes it closely. The soft gaze meets his--half-happy, half-grieved--like a doubtful child's. "You are not in earnest, Lulu. You do love me--you will be my wife?" "I cannot." He stops still under a tall myrtle and puts his arm around her slim, girlish waist. "Brownie, willful, teasing little fairy that you are--you cannot, you will not deny that you love me--can you, honestly, now?" "I have not denied it--have I?" her gaze falling before his. "Not in so many words, perhaps; but you refuse to be my wife--if you loved me, how could you?" "If I loved you I would still refuse." "Brownie, _why_?" "Because----" "That is a woman's reason. Give me a better one." "How can I, a woman, give you a better one?" she answers, evasively, tilting the brim of her hat a little further over her face. She does not want him to see the white and red flushes hotly coming and going. "Because a better one is due me," he persists, his earnestness strengthened by her refusal. "Surely, a man, when he lays his heart, and hand, and fortune at a lady's feet, deserves a better reason for his refusal than '_because_.'" Her cheek dimples archly a moment, but she brightens as she says, almost inaudibly: "Well, then, it is because you do not love me." "Lulu, silly child, why should I ask you to be my wife then? I do love you--as love goes nowadays--fondly and truly." "Ah! that is it," she cries, bitterly, "as love goes nowadays--and I do not want such love--my heart, where it loves, resigns its whole ardent being, and it will not take less in return." "And have I offered you less?"--reproachfully this. She nods in silence. "Lulu, dear, unreasonable child that you are--why do you think that I do not love you? Be candid with me and let us understand one another. I will not be offended at anything you say to me." "Nothing?" "Nothing! If you can show just cause why and wherefore such a thing as my not loving you can be, I surely cannot be offended."