“You _can_ believe me, Laura! Only trust in me!”
“I—I don’t know, Hal. I know what men are. They’re all so much alike.”
“Not all, dear! You ought to know me well enough to have confidence in me. Think of the long, long time we’ve known each other. Think of the years and years of friendship! Why, Laura, we’ve known each other ever since we were a couple of children playing on the beach, writing each other’s names in the sand—”
“But we’re not children now. There’s something in my heart no tide can obliterate!”
“I hope that’s true, Hal. But you’re not through college yet. Wait till you are. You’ve got to graduate with flying colors, and make your dear old grandfather the proudest man in the world, and be the wonderful success I know you’re going to be! And make me the happiest girl! You will, won’t you?”
“I’ll do anything in the world for you, Laura!” he exclaimed. His face, flushed with enkindling desire, showed no sign of shame or dejection. Laura knew nothing of his débâcle at the university. Of course she must soon know; but all that still lay in the future. And to Hal nothing mattered now but just the golden present with its nectar in the blossom and its sunshine on the leaf. He drew her a little closer.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you really care?”
“Don’t ask me—yet!” she denied him, turning her face away. “Come, let’s be going down!”
“You needn’t be afraid of _me_!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t, are you, dear?”
“No more than I am of myself,” she answered frankly, while her throat and face warmed with blood that suddenly burned there. “We—really oughtn’t to be alone like this, Hal.”
He laughed and opened his arms to let her go. For a moment she stood looking up at him; then her eyes, too innocent to find the guile in his, smiled with pure-hearted affection.
“Forgive me, Hal!” said she. “I didn’t mean that. But, you know, when you put your arms round me like that—”
“I won’t do it again,” he answered, instinct telling him the bird would take fright if the trap seemed too tightly closed. He dropped his arms, the palms of his hands spread outward. “You see, when you tell me to let you go, I mind you?”
“Yes, like the good, dear boy you are!” she exclaimed with sudden, impulsive affection. She reached up, took his face in both hands and studied his eyes. He thought she was about to kiss him, and his heart leaped. He quivered to seize her, to burn his kisses on her lips, there in the leafy, sun-glimmering shade; but already Laura’s arms had fallen, and she had turned away, back toward the path that would lead them downward from this tiny enchanted garden to the common level of the world again.