“I can’t come every Sunday.”
“Of course you can. Considering I’m engaged to you, it’s only proper.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes,” he said, “you may not be engaged to me, but I’m engaged to you. That’s what I’ve decided.”
She laughed. “You’ll find it rather dull, I’m afraid.”
“No,” he said. “I can do things for you.” She was struck by that simple statement, spoilt by his next words: “Like these chocolates.”
He was very insistent about the chocolates and proud of his idea. She thanked him. “But I don’t want you to give me things.”
“You can’t stop me. I’m doing it all the time.”
They had reached the highest point of the hill and they halted at the railing on the cliff’s edge. Below them, the blackness of earth gave way to the blackness of air and the shining blackness of water, and slowly the opposing cliff cleared itself from a formless mass into the hardly seen shapes of rock and tree. Here was beauty, here was something permanent in the midst of change, and it seemed as though the hand of peace were laid on Henrietta. For a moment the episode on the other side of the water and the problem it involved took their tiny places in the universe instead of the large ones in her life and, strangely enough, it was Charles Batty who loomed up big, as though he had some odd fellowship with immensity and beauty.
“What do you give me?” she asked. “I don’t want it, you know, but tell me.”