Miss Trevor flushed, but Howard was smiling and she did not long resist the contagion.
“My to-morrow,” he continued, “is far more menacing than yours. Yours is just an ordinary, every-day, cut-and-dried affair. Mine is full of doubts and uncertainties with the chances for failure and disappointment. If I can turn my back on my to-morrow, surely you can waive yours for the moment?”
“But why are you so certain that I wish to?”
“Instinct. I could not be so happy as I am with you if you were not content to have me here.”
They spoke little until they were well within the Park. There they turned down a by-path and took the walk skirting the lower lake. Miss Trevor looked at Howard with a puzzled expression.
“I never met any one like you,” she said. “I have always felt so sure of myself. You take me off my feet. I feel as if I did not know where I was going and—didn’t much care. And that’s the worst of it.”
“No, the best of it. You are a star going comfortably through your universe in a fixed orbit. You maintain your exact relations with your brother and sister stars. You keep all your engagements, you never wobble in your path—everything exact, mathematical. And up darts a wild-haired, impetuous comet, a hurrying, bustling, irregular wanderer coming from you don’t know where, going you don’t know whither. We pass very near each to the other. The social astronomers may or may not note a little variation in your movement—a very little, and soon over. They probably will not note the insignificant meteor that darted close up to you—close enough to get his poor face sadly scorched and his long hair cruelly singed—and then hurried sadly away. And——”
“And—what? Isn’t there any more to the story?” Marian’s eyes were shining with a light which she was conscious had never been there before.
“And—and——” Howard stopped and faced her. His hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his overcoat. He looked at her in a way that made the colour fly from her face and then leap back again. “And—I love you.”
“Oh”—Marian said, hiding her face in her white muff. “Oh.”