"How do you mean your fault?"
"Perhaps I ought not to have gone away, to have left you for so long."
"My dear Paul, what are you thinking of? What possible claim have I on you, that you should deprive yourself of a holiday and give up visiting your friends on my account?"
"What claim have you! The claim of being dearer to me than any person in the world; the claim of being the one creature for whom I care beyond all others. Can there be a greater claim than this?"
She looked at him quietly and almost pityingly as she said:
"I thought you would have given up all this romantic nonsense, Paul; I thought you would have come back infinitely more rational and practical than you were when you left."
"I suppose that is what you pride yourself on having become," said Paul, with a dash of bitterness in his tone; "'rational' and 'practical,' and 'romantic nonsense!' You didn't call it by that name when we used to walk in this place but a very few weeks ago."
"It was different then," said Daisy, looking round with a shudder.
"It was, indeed," said Paul. "There is something gone besides leaves from the trees."
"And what is that?" asked Daisy, provokingly.