An awkward silence began to fall between them. Daphne felt that the time had come for her to speak. But, powerless to begin, she feigned to busy herself all the more devotedly with braiding the deep-green circlet. Suddenly he drew himself through the grass to her side.
"Let me!"
"No!" she cried, lifting her arm above his reach and looking at him with a gay threat. "You don't know how."
"I do know how," he said, with his white teeth on his red underlip, and his eyes sparkling; and reaching upward, he laid his hand in the hollow of her elbow and pulled her arm down.
"No! No!" she cried again, putting her hands behind her back. "You will spoil it!"
"I will not spoil it," he said, moving so close to her that his breath was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.
"No! No! No!" she cried, bending away from him. "I don't want any ring!" and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass. Then she got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.
He sat cross-legged on the grass before her. He had put on his hat, and the brim hid his eyes.
"And you are not going to stay and talk to me?" he said in a tone of reproachfulness, without looking up.
She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.