"What are serious things?" asked Peter.
"Well," said Honora vaguely, "ambitions, and what one is going to make of themselves in life. And then you make fun of me by saying you want Mr. Dwyer's house." She laughed again. "I can't imagine you in that house!"
"Why not?" he asked, stopping beside the pond and thrusting his hands in his pockets. He looked very solemn, but she knew he was smiling inwardly.
"Why—because I can't," she said, and hesitated. The question had forced her to think about Peter. "I can't imagine you living all alone in all that luxury. It isn't like you."
"Why I all alone?" asked Peter.
"Don't—Don't be ridiculous," she said; "you wouldn't build a house like that, even if you were twice as rich as Mr. Dwyer. You know you wouldn't. And you're not the marrying kind," she added, with the superior knowledge of eighteen.
"I'm waiting for you, Honora," he announced.
"You know I love you, Peter,"—so she tempered her reply, for Honora's feelings were tender. What man, even Peter, would not have married her if he could? Of course he was in earnest, despite his bantering tone, "but I never could—marry you."
"Not even if I were to offer you a house like Mr. Dwyer's?" he said. A remark which betrayed—although not to her—his knowledge of certain earthly strains in his goddess.
The colours faded from the water, and it blackened.