"You are such a queer mixture, Leo."
"I know. I can't help it." She was off her pedestal as fast as she had hopped on. "I do try to remember, and at Deeside it was quite easy; nobody thought of me as 'funny' or a 'girl' there—but here I seem to be back again just as I was when I left! All the places are the same, the places where we had our accidents and our happenings, and I can't feel different. Only, Val——" she hesitated.
"Well?" said he.
"There's Godfrey. I would not for worlds, not for worlds—it would be horrible to seem to forget Godfrey. I don't forget him, you know; I don't really. It is just that my spirits get up on a morning like this, what with meeting you, and talking, and all,"—she stumbled on incoherently,—"and you are so kind, and seem just to know what it is like. Only you mustn't take advantage, Val,"—and she shook her head at him with an air of gentle exhortation, "you mustn't encroach. And I don't think I can meet you out-of-doors—no I can't"—(as he emitted an expostulatory "Oh, I say!") "I have made up my mind. You always called me your tyrant, don't you remember? Well, it's no use fighting against your tyrant now."
"All right." A happy idea occurred, and Val made shift to acquiesce indifferently. "Very glad to have had the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and so forth; and now I must go back to grandmother, and I daresay we shan't see each other again for months."
"Not—for—months?"
"Perhaps not this winter. I may be going away from home. I daresay I shall. It's beastly dull at our place, and there's nothing going on anywhere hereabouts."
"But, Val?"—the shot had told; she was plainly disconcerted. "Going away?"—she faltered.
"Very likely I shall. I haven't made up my mind where, but——"
"But you never do go. What should you go for now?"