“And Mr. Beaumont—what shall I do?”
“Oh! don't fret yourself about him. He will get over it. He has no end of this sort of thing to go through before his life is up. It will do him good.” Clytie had not much time to map out any fixed plan of treatment of her would-be lover, for he met her an afternoon or two afterwards outside University College, where he had been waiting for her, and pleaded that she would walk a little way up towards the Regent's Park, as the afternoon was fine.
Clytie looked at him and hesitated.
“Only just a little way. I have something I must tell you.”
“Perhaps you had best never tell it,” said Clytie.
The red-waistcoated gate porter behind them beamed on them smilingly. He had seen something of youthful love in his professional career.
“I must, whatever happens,” replied the young fellow. “I know it's wrong to ask you to walk in the street with me, but I don't know when I shall get another chance.”
“I don't see anything wrong about it,” said Clytie. “I will go with you wherever you wish.”
So they wandered up Gower Street and the Euston Road into the park, and there, for the first time in her life, Clytie heard a man confess his love for her and ask her to marry him. He was only a boy after all, but he was in great earnest. Clytie felt humbled, almost guilty, and yet a great, unknown pleasure thrilled through her. Although she knew that the sooner and more summarily the interview was brought to an end the better for both herself and him, she could scarcely resist the temptation of allowing him to pour out the fulness of his boyish love for her.
She suddenly found herself listening to the sound but not the meaning of his words, her senses filled with the sweetness of the new sensations and the pure May sunlight that flooded the trees and the gay flower-bed opposite the bench where they were sitting. Then she realised her situation, and in a few kind words, harder to speak than she would have expected, dismissed him.