narrated the brief incident.

"Will it make any difference to us?" she ventured to ask.

"It'll make a difference to us if he blabs to father. Of course!"

"What sort of difference, Claude?"

"The sort of difference it makes when there's the devil to pay."

She clasped him to her the more closely. "Does that mean that we
shouldn't be able to see each other any more?"

The question being beyond him, Claude smothered it under a selection of
those fond epithets in which his vocabulary was large. In the very
process of enjoying them Rosie was rallying her strength. She was still
clasping him as she withdrew her head slightly, looking up at him
through the moonlight.

"Claude, I want to ask you something."

With his hand on the knot of her hair, he pressed her face once more
against his. "Yes, yes, darling. Ask me anything. Yes, yes, yes, yes."

She broke in on his purring with the words, "Are we engaged?"

The purring ceased. Without relaxing his embrace he remained passive,
like a man listening. "What makes you ask me that?"

"It's what people generally are when they're--when they're like us,
isn't it?"

Brushing his lips over the velvet of her cheeks, he began to purr again.
"No one was ever like us, darling. No one ever will be. Don't worry your
little head with what doesn't matter."

"But it does matter to me, Claude. I want to know where I am."

"Where you are, dearie. You're here with me. Isn't that enough?"

"It's enough for now, Claude, but--"

"And isn't what's enough for now all we've got to think of?"

"No, Claude dearest. A girl isn't like a man--"

"Oh yes, she is, when she loves. And you love me, don't you, dearie? You
love me just a little. Say you love me--just a little--a very little--"

"Oh, Claude, my darling, my darling, you know I love you. You're all
I've got in the world--"

"And you're all I've got, my little Rosie. Nothing else counts when I'm
with you--"

"But when you're not with me, Claude? What then? What am I to think when
you're away from me? What am I to be?"

"Be just as you are. Be just as you've always been since the day I first
saw you--"

"Yes, yes, Claude; but you don't understand. If any one were to find out
that I came here to meet you like this--"

"No one must find out, dear. We must keep that mum."

"But if they did, Claude, it wouldn't matter to you at all--"

"Oh, wouldn't it, though? Father'd make it matter, I can tell you."

"Yes, but you wouldn