Then, for a second, feeling returned to me; there came a little flutter of fear within me, the same I sometimes felt in childhood when I had told a lie and, wanting to confess it, stood at my mother’s door saying, “May I come in?”
There was no moon, but the sky was not dark. We walked through the garden in silence; once or twice I contrived to force up to my lips, by great effort, the words I meant to speak; but then my heart beat so fearfully that I felt my courage fail me, and I said to myself, time after time, “Presently will do.” It was not active love for Gabriel that checked me, merely the actual physical fear that I suppose most people experience when about to give forth words of great import.
But just as we reached the shrubbery, I said:
“Gabriel, I have something to tell you.”
“And so have I,” said he, “something to tell you. But you first.”
“No,” I replied; “you first.”
It was for one moment a great relief to think that he was about to save me from the trial I dreaded.
We took a few more steps in silence; I was looking down, not at him. I felt my heart beat more than ever, fear was still there, but of a different kind; I awaited his words as one might await a death-blow. But they did not come. Suddenly he halted, and I, too.
“Well?” said I, and I lifted my head.
There he stood, smiling at me.