"I like it."
"No," he insisted, rallying. "Now your little friend, Miss Weare, has done the sensible thing. So will you. Of course you'll get married too, Joan."
"I? No," I said with unsmiling finality. "I shall not get married."
At this my old love put back his head and laughed.
Then it came.
Standing there close to me on the path bordered on one side by the sweetpeas, on the other by the high garden wall with its fans of plum and apricot, he moved as if to pull himself together for a jump. He gave one very odd glance about him. That glance seemed made up of so many things: resolution, amusement, pettishness, teasing, ruefulness, a certain kindliness, and triumph.
Then his eyes came back smiling to mine as he exclaimed, "Ah, darling, rot! I'll tell you something. You are going to get married. I am going to marry you myself."
I suppose no man in this world had ever made that announcement to a girl feeling more utterly sure of his success than was Captain Harry Markham at that moment. I think no girl in this world can ever have had more difficulty than I had then in conveying to a suitor that his proposal was not to be accepted after all.
How he clung to the conviction that I could not mean what I said, that I was teasing him, paying him out!
"Paying you out? Why should I? For what?"