“Well, I’ve told you.”
“Oh, I think you ought to go.”
“Then you don’t love me?”
From under her raised eyebrows she looked at him steadily. “No, I don’t love you,” she said slowly. There was no need to consider her answer: she was sure of it. She was fond of him, but she could not romantically love some one who looked and behaved like a spoilt boy. She glanced from his handsome, frowning face in which the mouth was opening for protest to a scene perfectly set for a love affair. There was not so much as a sheep in sight: there was only the horse who, careless of these human beings, still ate eagerly, chopping the good grass with his teeth, and the spaniel who panted self-consciously and with a great affectation of exhaustion. The place was beautiful and the sunlight had some quality of enchantment. Faint, delicious smells were offered on the wind and withdrawn in caprice; the trees were all tipped with green and interlaced with blue air and blue sky; she wished she could say she loved him, and she repeated her denial half regretfully.
“Rose,” he pleaded, “I’ve known you all my life!”
“Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps I know you too well.”
“You don’t. You don’t know how—how I love you. And I should be different with you. I should be happy. I’ve never been happy yet.”
“You can’t,” she said slowly, “get happiness through a person if you can’t get it through yourself.”
“Yes—if you are the person.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”