Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/39

 enough work to tire him and even if he had his convenience would never have been consulted in the choice of a holiday. But a quiet place was a cheap place.

“Don’t you think those chairs look rather inviting?” said Walter suddenly.

She followed his eyes and saw two green chairs by themselves under a tree on the grass.

“Let us sit in them,” she said.

But when they were seated he seemed to grow strangely abstracted. He was an odd creature. She chattered on, however, gaily enough and wondered why he had asked her to walk with him in the Park. Perhaps he was going to confide in her his passion for the flat-footed nurse in Hong-Kong. Suddenly he turned to her, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence, so that she could not but see that he had not been listening, and his face was chalk white.

“I want to say something to you.”

She looked at him quickly and she saw that his eyes were filled with a painful anxiety. His voice was strained, low and not quite steady. But before she could ask herself what this agitation meant he spoke again.

“I want to ask you if you’ll marry me.”

“You could knock me down with a feather,” she answered so surprised that she looked at him blankly.

“Didn’t you know I was awfully in love with you?”

“You never showed it.”

“I’m very awkward and clumsy. I always find it