She looked so resolute that Doyle hesitated. “Won’t you be implored to stay here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not if you go,” she said. And, without further parley, he stooped and came in.
They could not stand upright against the shelving sides and roof of the place, so perforce they sat upon the ground—she, with her feet tucked under her, leaning upon one hand, in the way of her sex, he hugging his knees. There might have been thirty cubic feet of space in the cave, but it was not comfortably apportioned, and he had to crouch rather awkwardly to keep himself at what he considered a proper distance. It was warm and dry there, and the dull fire of the embers in the middle gave a centre and a significance to the completeness of their shelter. The clouds hung like a grey curtain before the entrance, bordered all round with trailing vines and drooping ferns; the beat of the rain came in to them in a heavy distant monotone, and even the thunder seemed to be rolling in a muffled way among the valleys below. Doyle felt that nothing could be more perfect than their solitude. He would not speak, lest his words should people it with commonplaces; he almost feared to move, lest he should destroy the accident that gave him the privilege of such closeness to her. The little place was filled, it seemed to him, with a certain divine exhalation of her personality, of her freshness and preciousness; he breathed it, and grew young again, and bold. In the moments of silence that fell their love arose before them like a presence. The girl saw how beautiful it was without looking, the man asked himself how long he could wait for its realisation.
“Are you very wet?” he asked her at last.
“No; only my jacket.”
“Then you ought to take it off, oughtn’t you? Let me help you.”
He had to lean closer to her for that. The wet little coat came off with difficulty; and then he put an audacious hand upon the warm shoulder in its cambric blouse underneath, with a suddenly taught confidence that it would not shrink away.
“Only a little damp,” he said. It was the most barefaced excuse for his caressing fingers. “Tell me, darling, when a preposterously venerable person like me wishes to make a proposal of marriage to somebody who is altogether sweet and young and lovable like you, has he any business to take advantage of a romantic situation to do it in?”
She did not answer. The lightness of his words somewhat disturbed her sense of their import. Then she looked into his face, and saw the wonderful difference that the hope of her had written there, and, without any more questioning, she permitted herself to understand.
“Think about it for a little while,” he said, and came a good deal nearer, and drew her head down upon his breast. He knew a lifetime of sweet content in the space it rested there, while he laid his lips softly upon her hair and made certain that no other woman’s was so sweet-scented.