"Is it right to meet you like this?" I said.
"You need never meet me like this again," he said. "You have only to say 'Yes' to my request, and you and I together will go straight back to Hanbury Square, and I myself will ring the bell at Number 13, and we will ask for an interview with your father, and afterwards I shall be free to come to the house during the brief time we are engaged. For, oh, darling! we must be married very, very soon."
"But I never promised to marry you," I answered.
"Oh, Heather!" was his reply. He bent forward and looked into my eyes.
"I never, never did," I said, shaking my head, and trying to avoid his eyes.
"You certainly did not yesterday," was his answer then. "I don't know that I even wanted you to, but when you came to me to-day I saw 'Yes' written all over your face. You cannot deny it—you are mine, mine only; you would give up every other man in the wide world just for me."
I tried very hard to reply; I tried to tell him that he was impertinent and vain, but the words would not rise to my lips. On the contrary, I had the utmost possible difficulty in keeping myself from bursting into tears, for I knew well that I loved him, if not yesterday, most certainly to-day. There was something about him which appealed to my whole heart, to which my heart went out. Still, I sat silent, declining to speak—perfectly happy, perfectly contented, afraid to break my bliss by the uttering of a single word.
As I sat so, with my shoulder within an inch or two of his, I began to consider the violets, just as though he had given them to me. I had bought those violets yesterday, and they were full of him; I had brought some back with me to the Park to-day, but they were already slightly faded. Not that our hopes were faded—far from that—only the violets. I considered the violets—his special flowers—just as though he had plucked them and given them to me; they seemed to be mixed up with him, and I believed that all my life long I should love with a tender sort of passion the smell of violets, and hate, beyond all words, the smell of roses, and in particular of white roses.
"What are you thinking about, Heather?" he asked.
"Of you," I answered.