The pursuit took him over the greensward to the bench built around the great catalpa. The heat of the day was broken and the evening shadows lay upon the grass. Mr. Page was gone. Unity sat beneath the catalpa, elbow on knee and chin in hand, studying a dandelion at her feet. The poetical works of Mr. Alexander Pope lay at a distance, face down. The sky between the broad catalpa leaves was very blue, and a long ray of sunshine sifted through to gild the tendrils of Miss Dandridge's hair and to slide in brightness down her flowery gown. She glanced at the young man striding towards her from the house, then again admired the dandelion.
Fairfax Cary stooped, picked up Pope, and regarded the open pages with disfavour. "And at home he probably reads only The Complete Farrier—on Sundays maybe the Gentleman's Magazine or The Book of Dreams!"
"Who?" asked Unity.
"My rival. If he read Greek, he would yet be my rival and an ignorant fellow."
"He does read Greek," said Miss Dandridge severely, "and 'ignorant fellow' is the last thing that could be applied to him. Did you ride over from Greenwood to be scornful?"
"I rode over to be as meek as Moses and as patient as Job—"
"They were never my favourites in Scripture."
"Nor mine." He closed the book, swung his arm, and Pope crashed into a lilac bush. "There," he said, "goes meekness, patience, and the eighteenth century. This is the nineteenth. Time is no endless draught, no bottomless cup. Waste of life is the cankered rose. You know that you treat me badly."
"Do I?—I did not mean to."
"You do. Now you've got to say to me, 'I love you and I'll marry you,' or 'I love you not and I'm going to marry some one else.' If it's the first, I'll be the happiest man on earth; if the second, I'll go far away and try to forget."