Mrs. Grey looked rather perplexed and as if she were vainly trying to determine what she had said to make Pauline suppose that leave for walks had been given. However, she evidently supposed it had; and when next Guy came to the Rectory, Pauline whispered to him they could go for a walk if they did not have to go through Wychford. She could not understand herself when she found it so difficult to tell Guy this delightful news, for it was she who had managed it; and yet here she was blushing in the revelation.
The fact that Wychford was out of bounds really made their walk more magical, for Pauline and Guy went past the lily-pond and the lawn in front of the house and slipped through the little wicket in the high grey wall, as it were, in the very eye of the nursery-window. They dallied for a while in the paddock, peering for fritillary buds; then they crossed the rickety bridge to the water-meadows, a territory not spied upon, silver-rosed with lady-smocks. To-day they would visit the peninsula where under the moon they first had met.
Pauline, as they walked over the meads, no longer had the desire to ask Guy more about his tale of old loves. His presence beside her had rested her fears; and she made up her mind that the disquiet of the other evening had been mere fatigue after the excitement of the day. This secluded world from which they were now approaching the even greater seclusion of their peninsula gave itself all to her and Guy.
"How often have I been here without you," said Guy. "How often have I wished you were beside me, and now you are beside me."
They were standing in a wreath of snowy blackthorn, that almost veiled even the narrow entrance to this demesne they held in fief of April.
"What did you think about me that night we met?" Guy asked.
And for perhaps the hundredth time she whispered how she had liked him very much.
"Why don't you ask me what I thought about you?"
"What did you?" she whispered again.
"I went to sleep thinking of you," he said. "I did not know your name. I loved you then, I think. Pauline, when next September comes, we'll pick mushrooms together, shall we? And I shall never gather any mushrooms, because I shall always be gathering your hands. And the September afterward. Pauline! Shall we be married? Pauline Hazlewood! Say that."