"If we could begin it all over again from the day I first met you on the river, I think I might have a better chance--at least, I would not play the fool so utterly--at least, my memories of you would be free from pain--and I should have left undone the things that I have done."
"Why should you say that?" she asked. "Is it not enough that what you did made me love you?"
"Your godfathers and godmothers should have christened you Barnabasina," he replied, with an effort after his old, light manner, "for you are verily a daughter of consolation, Marjory; but even you cannot take the sting out of some things. If I could have the past over again! Nothing short of that will satisfy me."
Her quick, bright face grew brighter.
"Then you shall have it, dear, as far as I'm concerned. Yes! you shall! It will be pleasant for me, too. Don't laugh at my fancy, for I like fancies sometimes; they help one along the dead level bits of the road. I'll say 'good-bye' here, Paul, here in the very spot where you said good-bye before--do you think I could forget it? And then to-morrow----" she hesitated in her very eagerness.
"Yes, to-morrow, Marjory?" he echoed.
"To-morrow you shall meet me at the old place on the river--you remember it, of course, and we shall begin all over again--all over again from the very beginning, to the very end. I remember them all, Paul; everything, I believe, that you ever said--everything, at any rate, that you ever said which I disliked. Is that unkind? And so when the time comes for those bits you shall not say them--we will cut them out of the past."
"It will be Hamlet with the Prince left out," he said, falling in with her playful mood.
"Not a bit of it! Besides if it were I should not mind. It was never the prince I liked, but Paul--the real Paul."
"I wonder which one that is," he replied quickly, yet with a smile; for her radiant face would not be cheated of its due.