“I guess you’d better take my arm or you’ll tumble down the steps.”
This time Angela did not refuse; she laid her fingers on his sleeve with a queer, wild thrill of feeling, half pleasure and half fear. Bernard put his own hand over hers. “I’m no end glad,” he said, quite simply.
Then he led her, trusting to his guidance for every step, down a lonely, mossy path through a copse of trees: to Bernard’s eyes the darkness was clear as daylight. When they were as far from the moonlit lake as the size of the garden would permit, he began to talk.
“I expect you’re pretty shy of taking me, aren’t you?” he said, gently.
“Rather. I—I should be—always—whoever it was.”
“I suppose girls are made like that.” Bernard paused to contemplate the strangeness of feminine nature. “But what I mean is that you feel it’s specially risky taking me, because you and I are so different. Don’t you?”
Angela said nothing.
“Dolly was trying to lecture me about that this evening,” Bernard pursued. “She was saying you aren’t like her. Well, I should think anybody could see that who wasn’t an ass. Dolly could walk twenty miles and come up smiling, and I shouldn’t let you do more than about two. And it’s just the same with your feelings. You want looking after, and taking care of, and that sort of thing.”
“I’m used to taking care of myself, and Lal, too,” Angela pointed out.
“Well, of course, you won’t do that any more,” Bernard assured her, with calm authority. “Laurenson’ll have to shift for himself, he’s old enough; and I shall look after you. When we’re married, you know, I sha’n’t let you do the dairy work or any of the things Dolly does. We shall have to have another servant; but that won’t matter so much, as you’ve got some money of your own.”