"I think it's dry enough to sit on this stone," said Guy.
So they sat on one of the outcrops of Wychford freestone that all around were thrusting themselves up from the grass like old grey animals.
"Now tell me more about Miss Verney," he went on. "Why was her love-affair unhappy?"
"Oh, she never told me much," said Pauline.
"You and I haven't very long," said Guy. "Love travels by so fast. You and I mustn't have secrets."
"I haven't any secrets," said Pauline. "I had one about Richard, but you know about him. And that was Margaret's secret really. Why do you say that, Guy?"
"I was thinking of myself," he answered. "I was thinking how little you know about me—really not much more than you know of Miss Verney's miniature."
"Guy, how strange," she said. "Last night I thought that."
Then he began to talk in halting sentences, turned away from her all the time and digging his stick deep down in the turf, while Bob looked on with anxious curiosity for what these excavations would produce.
"Pauline, I so adore you that it clouds everything to realize that before I loved you, I should have had love-affairs with other girls. Of course they meant nothing, but now they make me miserable. Shall I tell you about them or shall I ... can I blot them for ever out of my mind?"