"I love you," he said; "I've always loved you.... I'm a blackguard to say it—penniless nobody that I am—without much chance to be anything else, apparently. But I say it for better or worse.... I love you. You like me, but you think lightly of me.... With sufficient reason, God knows.... And I have no right to touch you—no right in decency or law, Diana."
She forced herself away from him, but, somehow, held his hands clasped convulsively in hers.
"You—shouldn't have kissed me," she managed to say. "You mustn't do it again—ever."
He laid his face against their clasped hands; her own tightened.
"Nevertheless," he said, "I love you."
"You mustn't speak that way—" She dropped her flushed face; he lifted it, and kissed her again.
When he released her, she leaned back against the silver birch, head lowered, silent and did not move her hands from the moss as he bent and kissed them, too.
When at last she found her voice, she spoke so low that he bent his head closer to listen.
"That is the one imprudence I have never before committed—contact with any man. You must not do it to me again.... I don't know how to take it. I can't love you. You know that." She looked up at him. "Don't you know it?"
"Yes," he said stubbornly.