Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/296

264 for days, with that midday train on Saturday hanging over our heads? And now that there is no one else to prevent us from loving each other"

"What do you mean?" she said quickly. He laughed again and felt for her hand, and took it between his.

"Mean? Do you suppose I haven't known it for a whole month, you foolish" "Who told you," she asked, and her thoughts flew to the Squire's wife.

"Oh, never mind that. Now, please, I want to know why you didn't tell me you were a widow? Were you afraid of me?"

"What an idea!"

"Then I suppose it was a miserable truce with respectability to enable you to patronise the broken-down novelist without implicating" "Allan! How dare you?" she cried, and snatched her hand away. He put his into his pockets, and strolled on.

"Well, you must own it is slightly unaccountable. I thought it was one of your impetuous freaks at first. But you kept it up too long for that. And then I put it down in my vanity to your liking me a little still, and wishing to conceal it. But I was soon dispossessed of that idea. And then finally"

"How prosy you are," she grumbled, "you are not half so amusing as you used to be."

"No, we don't seem to hit it quite so well as we did then, do we? You see, you were in love with me, and I"

"You know I never said so once!"

"And we had plenty to talk about. But our conversation is mostly sticky now."

"There isn't the novel any more," she said.