' Dear Charlie, it is no use. Please don't!' she said.
' I am sorry to disobey you,' said he; ' but I mean to. It is quite short—just this: if ever you change your mind, you will find me waiting for you. That is all.'
Sybil frowned.
' I can't accept that,' she said. ' You have no business to put the responsibility on me like that.'
' There is no responsibility.'
' Yes, there is; you practically threaten me. It is like writing a letter to say you will commit suicide unless I do something. You threaten, anyhow, to commit celibacy unless I marry you.'
' No, I don't threaten,' said he; ' so far from threatening, I only leave the door open in case of Hope wanting to come in. That is badly expressed; a woman would have said it better.'
Sybil was suddenly touched by his gentleness.
' No one could have said it better,' she said. ' Charlie, believe me, I am sorry, but—here is the truth of it: I don't believe I can love anybody. This also: if I did not like you so much, I think I would marry you.'
' Ah, spare me that,' he said.
' I do spare it you. I will not willingly make you very unhappy. Do you believe that?'
He stopped, and came close to her.
' Sybil, if you pointed to the sky and said it was night, I should believe you,' he said.
She made no reply to that, and they walked on in silence. Everywhere over the broad expanse of swelling downs, looking huge behind the heat-haze, and over the green restfulness of the water-meadows beneath them, even over the blue immensity of the sky, there was spread a sense of quiet and leisure. To Sybil, thinking of the after-lunch conversation, it seemed of value; to her at the moment this con-
