After about a mile and a half of walking we came to an oak wood. The road dipped suddenly between cool, green, mossy banks and lay in deep, grateful shade from the arching oaks above. I climbed the bank on one side and looked into the wood. It was very thick and wild, apparently rarely penetrated. Through the close-growing stems of the undergrowth I saw a bluebell carpet lying like inverted sky beneath the oaks.
"The wood looks very attractive," I said as I rejoined Viola; "but we can't stay to go into it now. We haven't the time; it's half past twelve already."
"I'm sorry," said Viola, looking wistfully at the green wood. "This is the nicest part; but I suppose we can't disappoint that woman by not getting back to luncheon."
So we walked back slowly through the noonday sun, admiring the double pink May peeping out from the green hedges.
When we came in just before lunch, she took the easy chair facing the window, and I sat down on one opposite and watched her. She was wearing a white cambric dress that looked very simple and girlish; she was smiling, and her face was delicately rose-coloured after the walk.
A sense of responsibility came over me. She was my cousin, my own blood relation. I must protect her, must think for her if she would not think for herself.
"You know it's risky being down here like this. You had much better come to some rustic church with me in another village and marry me there."
"No. You know perfectly well I am not going to marry you," she said softly, looking up at me with a smile in her eyes, great pools of blue beneath their exquisitely arched lids.
"It is ridiculous to suppose that you, an artist of twenty-eight, will want to keep faithful to one woman all the rest of your life—or her life. It would be very bad for you, if you did. One can't go against Nature, and Nature has not arranged things that way. Marriage is a pleasure perhaps; but Nature never arranged, marriage, and a man should not allow himself unnatural pleasures."
She was really laughing now, but I knew her resolve was perfectly serious and I did not see how I could break it up.