"

"The same things you said in New York? I don't want to hear them
again--they were horrible!"

"No, not the same--different ones. I want you to come out with me, away
from here."

"You always want me to come out! We can't go out here; we _are_ out, as
much as we can be!" Verena laughed. She tried to turn it off--feeling
that something really impended.

"Come down into the garden, and out beyond there--to the water, where we
can speak. It's what I have come for; it was not for what I told Miss
Olive!"

He had lowered his voice, as if Miss Olive might still hear them, and
there was something strangely grave--altogether solemn, indeed--in its
tone. Verena looked around her, at the splendid summer day, at the
much-swathed, formless figure of Miss Birdseye, holding her letter
inside her hat. "Mr. Ransom!" she articulated then, simply; and as her
eyes met his again they showed him a couple of tears.

"It's not to make you suffer, I honestly believe. I don't want to say
anything that will hurt you. How can I possibly hurt you, when I feel to
you as I do?" he went on, with suppressed force.

She said no more, but all her face entreated him to let her off, to
spare her; and as this look deepened, a quick sense of elation and
success began to throb in his heart, for it told him exactly what he
wanted to know. It told him that she was afraid of him, that she had
ceased to trust herself, that the way he had read her nature was the
right way (she was tremendously open to attack, she was meant for love,
she was meant for him), and that his arriving at the point at which he
wished to arrive was only a question of time. This happy consciousness
made him extraordinarily tender to her; he couldn't put enough
reassurance into his smile, his low murmur, as he said: "Only give me
ten minutes; don't receive me by turning me away. It's my holiday--my
poor little holiday; don't spoil it."

Three minutes later Miss Birdseye, looking up from her letter, saw them
move together through the bristling garden and traverse a gap in the old
fence which enclosed the further side of it. They passed into the
ancient shipyard which lay beyond, and which was now a mere vague,
grass-grown approach to the waterside, bestrewn with a few remnants of
supererogatory timber. She saw them stroll forward to the edge of the
bay and stand there, taking the soft breeze in their faces. She watched
them a little, and it warmed her heart to see the stiff-necke