'No!' said Rose scornfully, 'we are not Norway, and we are not Switzerland. To prevent disappointment, I may at once inform you that we have no glaciers, and that there is perhaps only one place in the district where a man who was not an idiot could succeed in killing himself.'
He looked at her, calmly smiling.
'You are angry,' he said, 'because I make comparisons. You are wholly on a wrong scent. I never saw a scene in the world that pleased me half as much as this bare valley, that gray roof'—and he pointed to Burwood among its trees—'and this knoll of rocky ground.'
His look travelled back to her, and her eyes sank beneath it. He threw himself down on the short grass beside her.
'It rained this morning,' she still had the spirit to murmur under her breath.
He took not the smallest heed.
'Do you know,' he said—and his voice dropped—'can you guess at all why I am here to-day?'
'You had never seen the Lakes,' she repeated in a prim voice, her eyes still cast down, the corners of her mouth twitching. 'You stopped at Whinborough, intending to take the pass over to Ullswater, thence to make your way to Ambleside and Keswick—or was it to Keswick and Ambleside?'
She looked up innocently. But the flashing glance she met abashed her again.
'Taquine!' he said, 'but you shall not laugh me out of countenance. If I said all that to you just now, may I be forgiven. One purpose, one only, brought me from Norway, forbade me to go to Scotland, drew me to Whinborough, guided me up your valley—the purpose of seeing your face!'