So I waited, whistling softly to myself as I pushed the withered
leaves about with my stick and drew strange patterns among them. Half
an hour passed.
"I will give her a gentle reminder;" so I gathered a spray from the
honeysuckle, a late bloom among the fast-falling leaves, and aimed it
right at the muslin curtain. The folds parted and it fell into the
room, but instead of the answering face that I looked to see, all was
still again.
"It's very strange," thought I. "Bessie's pique is not apt to last so
long. She must indeed be angry."
And I went over each detail of our last night's talk, from her first
burst of "Take me with you!" to my boggling answers, my fears, so
stupidly expressed, that it would be anything but a picturesque
bridal-trip, and the necessity that there was for rapid traveling and
much musty, old research.
"What a fool I was not to take her then and there! She _is_ myself:
why shouldn't I, then, be selfish? When I do what of all things I want
to, why can't I take it for granted that she will be happy too?" And a
hot flush of shame went over me to think that I had been about to
propose to her, to my own darling girl, that we should be married as
soon as possible _after_ I returned from Europe.
Her love, clearer-sighted, had striven to forestall our separation:
why should we be parted all those weary weeks? why put the sea between
us?
I had accepted all these obstacles as a dreary necessity, never
thinking for the moment that conventional objections might be
overcome, aunts and guardians talked over, and the whole matter
arranged by two people determined on their own sweet will.
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