“Well—don’t I?” said Paul, smiling.
He found a little nook between two spurs of the thicket which had invaded the beach; here he made a seat for her with a fragment of wreck which had been washed up by the sea.
“Let us stay here all day,” she said, longingly.
“You will have me all the days of your life,” said Paul. He had seated himself at her feet. “We shall have to live in Port aux Pins for the present; you won’t mind that, I hope?”
She drew his head down upon her breast. “How I have loved you!”
“I know it,” he said, flushing. “It was that which made me love you.” He rose (it was not natural to Paul to keep a lowly position long), and, taking a seat beside her, lifted her in his arms. “I’m well caught,” he murmured, looking down upon her with a smile. “Who would ever have supposed that you could sway me so?”
“Oh,” cried Eve, breaking away from him, “it’s of no use; my one day that I counted on—my one short day—I cannot even dare to take that! Good women have the worst of it; if I could pretend that I was going to marry you, all this would be right; and if I could pretend nothing, but just take it, then at least I should have had it; a remembrance for all the dreary years that have got to come. Instead of that, as I have been brought up a stupid, good woman, I can’t change—though I wish I could! I shall have to tell you the truth: I can never marry you; the sooner we part, then, the better.” She turned and walked northward towards the Romney road.
With a stride Paul caught up with her. “What are you driving at?”
“I shall never marry you.”
He laughed.