"All that you said to me on the cliff that day—all about everything—about forgetting that you lived—about remembering that you lived. I've been trying so hard to forget," she sighed, deeply, "and I'm so tired of trying. If you hadn't taken care of me, I should have given up trying. Perhaps that would have been best too. I sometimes think it would have been much the best."
"Wait till you see the country again," I said. "You won't be sorry then. The tulips are up in Kensington Gardens—all the almond trees are pink. You wait till you get up—wait, too, till you've heard what I've got to suggest."
She glanced at me quickly.
"I can't take anything more from you," she began.
"You can wait," said I, "till you hear what I've got to say. Shall we have tea now or afterwards?"
"Afterwards. Perhaps you want your tea, though."
"So far as I am concerned," I replied, "everything can wait."
"Well, then—go on."
For a moment I wondered whether we had better not have tea, whether it were not wiser to wait until that light of excitement had gone out of her eyes. When again she begged me go on, I forgot about it; I was excited myself. For a whole two weeks I had pictured this moment of telling her. The best of us are inconsiderate when it comes to such a pass as this. I was going to show her my little castle in Spain, and it is these habitations of which we are proudest. With my own hands, as I sat in the park those mornings, I had built that little Tudor cottage with its apple orchard, where the sheep grazed in and out between the white-washed trunks. With my own hands I had laid the old garden, planting it with all those old flowers that will remain in every garden so long as England is what she is. Is there any wonder I was proud of it—any wonder that I wanted to tell her of it all just so fast as I could?
She listened with eyes round in wonder. Sometimes her fingers clasped and unclasped, and she beat her little hands about like a child who has something good to eat.