“I will be proud only of you,” Morris answered. “Will you meet me in the Square in the afternoon?”

A great blush on Catherine’s part had been the answer to the declaration I have just quoted. She turned away, heedless of his question.

“Will you meet me?” he repeated. “It is very quiet there; no one need see us—toward dusk?”

“It is you who are unkind, it is you who laugh, when you say such things as that.”

“My dear girl!” the young man murmured.

“You know how little there is in me to be proud of. I am ugly and stupid.”

Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she recognised nothing articulate but an assurance that she was his own dearest.

But she went on. “I am not even—I am not even—” And she paused a moment.

“You are not what?”

“I am not even brave.”