"I dinna ken," she answered simply, a strange little quiver running through her as she spoke.
"Isn't this better than anything else, just to be happy with everything so peaceful? Just you and I together, happy in each other's company."
"Ay," she answered again, a faint little catch in her voice, her heart a-tremble, and her eyes moist and shining. Then silence again, while they slowly strayed through the heather towards the little wooded copse, and Mysie felt that every thump of her heart must be heard at the farthest ends of the earth. Chased by the winds of passion raging within him, discretion was fast departing from Peter, leaving him more and more a prey to impulse and the unwearying persistence of the fever of love that was consuming him.
"Listen, Mysie, I read a song yesterday. It's the sort of thing I'd have written about you:
"In the passionate heart of the rose,
Which from life its deep ardor is feeing.
And lifts its proud head to disclose
Its immaculate beauty and being.
I can see your fine soul in repose,
With an eye lit with love and all-seeing,
In the passionate heart of the rose,
All athrob with its beauty of being."
He quoted, and Mysie's pulse leapt with every word, as the low soothing wooing of his voice came in soft tones like a gentle breeze among clumps of briars.
"Isn't it a beautiful song, Mysie?" he said. "The man who wrote that must have been thinking of someone very like you," and as he said this, he gave her hand a tender squeeze. Mysie thrilled to his touch and her heart leapt and fluttered like a bird in a snare, her breath coming in short little gasps, which were at once a pain and a joy.
"Dinna say that," she said, a note of alarm in her voice as she tried to withdraw her hand.
But he only held it closer, and bent his lips over it, his manner gentle but firm.
"Ay, it is true, Mysie; but I am so stupid I can't do anything of that kind. I'm merely an ordinary sort of chap."