"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating."
They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture and the pines.
"Before I say it, you must promise to take it in the right way," she said.
He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?"
"Because—because I wish you to so much!"
"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to behave myself, under ordinary provocation?"
"You may think the provocation is extraordinary."
"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to scramble after him.
She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs over them.
"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence.