Enid had turned her face away to the window and the lawn. Just so pitiful might she seem were she passed over by her lover.
“I am not going to tell you,” the old lover went on, looking at nothing visible, “what we did when we met. I think sometimes now that we were not wise. But we used to walk and walk, and she would tell me about girls and the ways of girls, and her childhood, so that I wished I had been a boy with her. She would praise me and say that if ever anything happened to me so that I was hurt and maimed, or if I should die, she would not go on living. The thought of such a thing made her angry and she would stop, and, without looking at me and seeming to forget me, would lift her arms and say confused things that sounded fierce which I could not hear, and then suddenly turn to me quite happy again.
“It was the finest day in my life, when, one May day we fished together, and cooked some fresh caught trout by the riverside over a fire of oak branches, and ate them together in the morning, just as the sun grew hot.
“Every day I wished to marry her, especially when she spoke suddenly after being silent, or when I could only smell her lovely breath and see the pale skin under her little ear in the dark.
“She did extraordinary things and she made me do extraordinary things.
“One day as we were walking we heard the sound of the Fair, and Arabella said that we must go. As quick as thought she knocked some walnuts off a tree and we stained our faces with the juice of the rind, and at a friendly cottage borrowed a rude disguise, for we went as gipsies. Arabella told fortunes, first, and I had to tell some too. Then she wanted me to play on a flute while she danced; but instead I kept somewhere near while she danced, to see that all was as it should be; and as it was, I nearly had to knock down a little Welshman whose harp she began dancing to; for while he played and she danced I hardly knew what was happening; it was as if I had gone into a church with rich windows out of a dark night. She danced all the way home, sometimes with her right hand just touching my right shoulder and looking up at me--Ah! Perhaps she thought I was a little careless at seeing her as much in love with me as I with her, and suddenly taking her hand off my shoulder she said quite fiercely that I must do something to show that I would do anything for her.”