"And yet you wanted to avoid me——"
He nodded. Ho knelt beside her, very white and earnest, with his hands clenched on his thighs.
"That was because I knew. I didn't think about it. But I knew all right. And I was afraid it would upset everything to care."
"Doesn't it?"
"Not caring for you. Of course, I know all about life. I'm young and I've never looked at a girl. I've always realized that it would be natural to fall in love—perhaps worse than most men—and that if it was with a girl like Cosgrave's it would be sheer damnation. I'd have to fight it down. But loving you is different. It'll make me stronger. I'll work harder and better because I love you. I'll do bigger things because of you."
Her head was bowed over her primroses. The sunlight falling between the trees on her wild brown hair kindled a smouldering colour in its disorder. He watched her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that she was smiling to herself. And suddenly, roughly like an ashamed boy, he took a grey and blood-stained rag from his inner pocket and tossed it into her lap.
"Do you remember that?"
She picked it up gingerly, amusedly.
"Is it a handkerchief, Robert?"
"Don't you remember it?" he repeated with triumph, as though in some way he had beaten her.