"I don't know," she answered, "I wish to goodness I did."
Now was here god-given opportunity, or merely a cunningly devised snare for the taking of the unwary? Ludovic pondered the matter. He gently kicked a little pebble from the dingy gray-drab of the asphalt on to the permanent way. It struck one of the metals with a sharp click. A blue-linen-clad porter, short of stature and heavy of build, lighted the gas lamps along the platform. The flame of these wavered at first, and flickered, showing thin and will-o'-the-wisp-like against the great outspread of darkening country across which the wind came with a certain effect of harshness and barrenness—the inevitable concomitant of its inherent purity. And the said wind treated Miss St. Quentin somewhat discourteously, buffeting her, obliging her to put up both hands to push back stray locks of hair. Also the keen breath of it pierced her, making her shiver a little. Both of which things her companion noting, took heart of grace.
"Is it permitted to renew a certain petition?" he asked, in a low voice.
Honoria shook her head.
"Better not, I think," she said.
"And yet, dear Miss St. Quentin, pulverised though I am by the weight of my own unworthiness, I protest that petition is not wholly foreign to the question you did me the honour to ask me just now."
"Oh! dear me! You always contrive to bring it round to that!" she exclaimed, not without a hint of petulance.
"Far from it," the young man returned. "For a good, solid eighteen months, now, I have displayed the accumulated patience of innumerable asses."
"Of course, I see what you're driving at," she continued hastily. "But it is not original. It's just every man's stock argument."
"If it bears the hall-mark of hoary antiquity, so much the better. I entertain a reverence for precedent. And honestly, as common sense goes, I am not ashamed of that of my sex."