"No, do not stir just yet," she says. "I only want to pick some of that syringa behind you, it is so sweet."
Disinclined for action of any sort, he obeys her. She slips away behind him, and he sits there waiting listlessly for her return, and thinking, somewhat sadly, how small he has made with her, and that she is almost as shy with him now as on that day by the river when first they met.
And then something marvellous happens that puts all his theories and regrets and fears to flight forever. Two soft arms—surely the softest in this wide glad world—steal round his neck; a gold-brown head is laid against his; a whisper reaches him.
"You were very good to me about that!" says somebody, tremulously; and then two warm childish lips are laid on his, and Monica is in his arms.
"I wonder what it was that frightened you?" says Desmond, in a tender whisper, drawing her down on his knees and enfolding her closely as though she were in form the child that verily at heart she still is. "Tell me."
"I don't know." She has twined her bare beautiful arms around him, and is rubbing her cheek softly up and down against his in a fresh access of shyness.
"I think you do, my dearest."
"It was only this; that when I found I couldn't get away from you, I was frightened. It was very foolish of me, but whenever I read those stories about prisoners of war, and people being confined in dungeons, and that, I always know that if I were made a captive I should die."
"But surely your lover's arms cannot be counted a prison, my life!"
"Yes, if they held me when I wanted to get away."