“You ought to wish me happiness or something, ought you not?” she said.
“I do, Patricia,” he said, looking up at her.
He wanted to say more; self-preservation demanded it, and again demanded silence. Their voices seemed to him far away, speaking in some fairy orchard where he was not. He could barely hear them.
“You’ll pretend not to know anything about it till to-morrow, won’t you?” she pleaded. “Don’t spoil my day. It isn’t that it won’t be perfectly lovely to be engaged, but the past has been, lovely too, and I want to keep it a tiny bit longer. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll help you.”
If he could but keep to-day forever shut in his heart with her, though life crumbled to ruins about them! But the invincible hours were ranged against him, and would claim it their own.
“And you’ll take me to the sea?”
“Yes, if you come at once.”
She descended from her perch with his help. She did not know his hands felt numb and dead as he held and released her.
“You haven’t told me the second thing about yourself,” she remarked, brushing the bark and lichen from her dress.