"What?" asked Lord Canning.
"Oh, nothing," stooping to pick up a sprig of balsam, which had fallen from Lord Stafford's basket.
"Let us follow that little trail down there beside the lake," suggested Lord Canning, "do you mind?"
The day had been sunless. The evening was still and gray, the air soft and balmy, without a tinge of frost. Through the trees that fringed the trail, they caught glimpses of the glassy lake mirroring the gray floating clouds, and great masses of autumn color, with sometimes the intervening dark shadow of a group of pines.
"Men to you are like a large correspondence, which is read carelessly, 'answered' scribbled on the envelopes, then piled into pigeon holes—forgotten."
"I always throw old letters away," said Indiana, sweetly. "I never accumulate rubbish."
"Oh!" said Lord Canning. He walked beside her for a little while, thinking deeply. "How silent it is here," he remarked, finally. "This soft carpet of pine needles muffles every footstep. It seems sacrilege almost, to speak. This trail seems to me like a dim, narrow aisle of a church, leading to the altar." He looked upward at the glimpse of gray sky. "Indiana, I am a very serious man. I accept life as worth living only with serious aims." They emerged upon a small open space in the woods, dimly lit, with a Turkish carpet of many-colored leaves. He drew Indiana down upon a fallen tree, covered with silvery patches of gray-green moss. "My ideal of a wife has been an intellectual woman of my own world and standing. But your little hands have bowled over, like a set of ninepins, all my long cherished traditions and ideas. You have taken possession of me, in a way which terrifies me. I am miserable away from you. I am miserable with you. I am restless, sleepless—you flit before me like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, whose light draws, maddens me. My pen is idle, my mail lies upon the table—unanswered. Tell me, have I a chance with you—or let me go. Let me put the ocean between us, for self-preservation."
"I don't wish you to think I trifle with marriage because I have refused several offers," said Indiana, seriously. "It's not waywardness or frivolity."
"Indiana!"
"You admit, in your feeling for me, reason has no place. And that your ideal of a wife is something entirely different from myself."