"And drown ourselves sometimes," added happy Boodles.
"Not till we quarrel, and that will be never."
"Look, Aubrey!" she cried, lifting herself, pointing between the bars of the gate into the wood. "There is our walk in a blue mist."
The atmosphere of the wood was the colour of bluebells, which stretched in a magic carpet as far as they could see.
"Let us go in," he said.
"Not yet. Not unless I—Oh, Aubrey, if we go in it will be all over. Do I deserve it? Those winter evenings, the loneliness, the winds," she murmured.
"It is all over," he said firmly, with a man's seriousness. "We have to start life now, for I have nobody but you—my little sweetheart, my wife of the radiant head, and the golden skin—"
"And the freckles," she said, looking down, without a smile.
"They have faded. You are so thin, sweet. You have been indoors too much, out of the sun."
"There wasn't any sun; not until to-day," she whispered.