'I spoke to you once, some time ago, on the abstract grounds of the question we have under discussion. These, being only a wild lily, you did not comprehend. You do not love me, or you would give me my promise fast enough on other grounds. You leave me a very difficult way. You leave me no way but to take measures to remove you from temptation. Is not that less pleasant, Hazel, than to give me the promise?'
She was silent for several minutes; not pondering the question, but fighting the pain. To be forced into anything,— to have him take that tone with her!—
'How will you do it?' she said.
He hesitated and then answered gently,
'You need not ask me that. You will not make it necessary.'
'Not ask?' said Wych Hazel rousing up. 'Of course I ask! Do you expect to frighten me off my feet with a mere impersonal "it"?'—Then with a laugh which somehow told merely of pain, she added: 'You might cut short my allowance, and stint me in slippers,—only that unfortunately the allowance is a fixed fact.'
'I did not mean to threaten,' he said in a voice that certainly spoke of pain on his own part. 'Is it so much to promise, Hazel?'
'You did do it, however,' said the girl,—'but we will pass that. Everything is "much" to promise. And why I refuse, Mr. Rollo, is not the question. But it seems to me, that while my father might command me, on my allegiance, to give such a promise, no delegated authority of his can reach so far. I may find myself mistaken.'
'Do me justice,' he said. 'I did not command a promise; I sued for it. The protection the promise was to throw around you, I will secure in other ways if I must. But do not forget, Hazel, why I do it.'
'I do not believe you know,' said the girl excitedly. ' "Wild lilies?"—why, even wild elephants are not usually required to tie their own knots. What comes next? I should like to have the whole, if possible, before I get home—which seems likely to be about breakfast time.'