"But for the present," - I said as soon as I could speak. "I am sure our chance for the future is better if we are patient and wait now."
"Patient, and wait?" said Mr. Thorold. "If we are patient now? What do you mean by patience? You in Switzerland, with half a hundred suitors by turns; and I here in the smoke of artillery practice, unable to see twenty yards from my drill - and that, you think, does not call for patience, but you must cut off the post-office from our national institutions. And to wait for you is not enough, but I must wait for news of you as well!"
"Christian!" said I, in desperation - "it is harder for me than for you."
He laughed at that; laughed and looked at me, and his eyes sparkled like a shower of fireworks, and then I was sure that a mist was gathering in them. I could scarcely bear the one thing ands the other. My own composure failed. He did not this time answer by caresses. He got up and paced the turf a little distance below me; his arms folded, his lips set, and the steps never slackening. So he was when I could look up and see. This was worse than anything. And the sun was lowering fast, and we had settled nothing, and our time was going. I waited a minute, and then I called him. He came and stood before me, face and attitude unchanged.
"Christian," I said, - "don't you see that it is best - my plan?"
"No," he said.
I did not know what to urge next. But as I looked at him, his lips unbent and his face shone down at me, after a sort, with love, and tenderness and pleasure. I felt I had not prevailed yet. I rose up and stood before him.
"Indeed it is best!" I said earnestly.
"What do you fear, Daisy?" His look was unchanged and feared nothing. It was very hard to tell him what I feared.
"I think, without seeing you and knowing you, they will never let us write; and I would rather they did not know anything about the - about us - till you can see them."