"Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms."
"You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here to-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan."
"If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here long enough."
"Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitch darkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. You can return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer you have made a morning call."
"I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am not altogether a fool. Neither is my horse."
"But you are not so familiar with the road," murmured Isabel, irrepressibly.
"That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is these sudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What a night for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! That is as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me know you—sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in your breast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks and crannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you as profoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman."
"I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is not a search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated to others when they do not wholly understand themselves."
"Do you understand yourself?"
She shrugged her shoulders.