Barton felt his courage come back to him.
“I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love you!” he said. “Margaret, can’t you care for me a little? Don’t tell me anything you think you should not say. I’m not curious.”
Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its inmates, grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into the waters, so that he could not see her face.
“No,” she said at last, in a very low voice; “it would not be fair.” Then, after another pause, “There is someone—” she murmured, and stopped.
This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care for him, he fancied she cared for nobody.
“If you like someone better—” he was beginning.
“But I don’t like him at all,” interrupted Margaret. “He was very kind, but—”
“Then can’t you like me?” asked Barton; and by this time he was very near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
“Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know,” murmured Margaret. And yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind but that Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the honors and rewards of war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is no covenant until it is sealed.
But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently, with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by the iron railings.