"Of course, on the face of it, no one has a right to ask a girl such a question; she might be consumed by a secret passion which was not reciprocated, which she knew never would be, and yet which she was aware would render it impossible that she should ever listen to another; by another I mean, for instance, you."
"Is yours a case of a secret passion?" She had dropped some of her primroses; he stooped to pick them up for her; a great bunch of them she had, almost as large as her two hands would hold.
"Thanks; no, I can't say that mine is; yet all the same--I've a fellow-feeling for you."
"That's very good of you; but in what sense have you what you call a fellow-feeling, and to what extent does it go?"
"It goes all the way. There go some of these primroses again; they are such droppy things."
"If you really mean what you say then I am a very happy man."
"You may be or you mayn't; happiness is often largely a question of temperament. For example, I ought to be a very unhappy girl, but I'm not; somehow unhappiness doesn't seem to come easy to me."
"You are very fortunate; what cause have you for unhappiness? I should have thought that there were few people who had less. Has it anything to do with the imagination?"
"There's only one thing I want in this world, and it looks as if I were as little likely to get it as if it were the moon; you may call that imagination, but it's a fact."
"And what may that one thing be?"