"Oh, I hope you will," said Eve, sincerely.
"Your saying that makes it look farther off than ever," responded Wade, with a wry smile.
"My saying that? But why?" she asked in surprise.
"Because," he answered, after a moment's silence, "if you knew what it is I want, I don't think you'd want me to have it, and that you don't know proves that I'm a long way off from it."
"It sounds like a riddle," said Eve, perplexedly. "Please, Mr. Herrick, what is the answer?"
Wade clenched his hands in his pockets and looked very straight ahead up the road.
"You," he said.
"Me?" The sunshade was raised for an instant. "Oh!" The sunshade dropped. They walked on in silence for a few paces. Then said Wade, with a stolen glance at the white silken barrier:
"I hope I haven't offended you, Miss Walton. I had no more intention of saying anything like that when we started out than—than the man in the moon. But it's true, and you might as well know it now as any other time. You're what I want, more than I've ever wanted anything before or ever shall again, and you're what I'm very much afraid I won't get. I'm not quite an idiot, after all. I know mighty well that—that I'm not the sort of fellow you'd fall in love with, barring a miracle. But maybe I'm trusting to the miracle. Anyhow, I'm cheeky enough to hope that—that you may get to like me enough to marry me some day. Do you think you ever could?"
"But—oh, I don't know what to say," cried Eve, softly. "I haven't thought—!"