He raised himself from his elbow, on to his wrist, with one knee beneath him, straightening himself with respectful homage to the occasion.
"Adoration!" he replied. "No man's eulogies can be an insult to the woman he adores."
Her eyes, brave enough before, would not meet that, and he saw the vain attempt to steady the rebellious tenderness of her lips. Their tremor touched him as it had before; his voice lost its little air of drama and dropped into the boyish plainness which so well became it.
"Please," he explained, "I should have said that first: only I didn't, because I thought you knew it. I'm not silly enough to suppose it matters whether I adore you or not, except just as an apology, the only apology for what I oughtn't to have said."
She was looking down deliberately at the hand on which she leant, and even her lips were hid from him. He bent towards her and put his hand over hers upon the sand.
"Dear," he said humbly, "it seems so idle to say I love you, that I only dare to say it—as an excuse. Will you let it stand at that, and forgive me just because of it? You needn't tell me that I have no claim, and never had the least encouragement to speak of such a thing. I know that. It's inconsiderate and presumptuous, and there's only me to blame. But some day, perhaps, you won't mind remembering that I worshipped you, and try to be a little sorry for me after all."
But what she tried, not over successfully, was to say his name. Yet her lips proclaimed it with such a tremulous appropriation as to answer all his other questions.
II
Maurice had never known an hour so disordered as that which followed his declaration. His mind was like a locomotive factory trying at a moment's notice to make balloons. It was a scene of astounding and fantastic compromises.