"Only to the rose-garden," he snapped. "Don't be alarmed! I shan't keep you longer than I can help."
He lighted a cigarette. Vaguely he felt that some such subsidiary occupation might prove helpful.
"In a moment of pardonable madness," he began, "the night before last, when I rather lost my head in my passion, I made a proposition to you which I should now like to recall."
"Oh," she said.
"I don't mean that it was not sincere," he pursued, "or that I was not moved by an unalterable feeling. I mean that it was not serious enough."
"Not serious enough?" she repeated.
"No, perhaps it was not quite the right thing, either," he said. "And I'm very sorry."
"Oh, that's all right," she rejoined cheerfully.
"Well, it isn't," he observed. "Because, Leo, I seriously wanted you, and I want you still. And I ought to have asked you to become engaged to me in the proper and ordinary way, instead of what I did say."
She was silent. Her head was bowed, and she kicked one or two stones along as she walked.