Milton, losing touch with her, lost touch with himself and was terrified. He had said, ‘Yes, but I was wondering if you would marry me,’ before he had had time to think, on an instinct that he must get out something at any price and have it there to stand by. She had understood what he said before he did, and answered: ‘You are very good, but no: I’m afraid it’s impossible’; so that he had proposed and been rejected before he had entirely realized that they were not still quarrelling about Cordelia. When this did dawn on him he turned to her in dismay. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said with a return to his usual manner, ‘that that was terribly awkward of me.’

‘Oh no, not at all,’ said Sydney, smiling shakily. ‘It’s supposed to be very gratifying.’

‘I did not mean to have said that today, I need hardly explain. It was unforgivable of me. But I suppose while we are on the subject that there is no further harm in my asking you, whether you can – as I think they call it – give me any hope?’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Sydney, feeling she had been asked something so preposterous that the answer was a matter for her common sense alone and that further inquiries need not be instituted.

‘Very well,’ said Milton and the bell-glass lifted, though it hung above them. She felt as though this image must have presented itself to him also, for he drew as though released from constriction another deep breath of air. After staring straight ahead at the sea for a moment he said, ‘Thank you’: she did not know for what, she supposed for her courtesy. This implied, she felt, a dismissal: a ‘You may go now, I have done with you!’

13

Cemetery

‘BUT I THOUGHT he liked dates!’ cried Cordelia. Panting at the top of the steps she stood clutching her package, appalled, to see Milton walk away rapidly in the direction from which they had come. She had run both ways so as to waste as little time as possible away from her friends, and she couldn’t help feeling that the escape of Milton in so short an interval could not but be due to some mismanagement on the part of Miss Warren, who now alone on the bench sat staring before her, smiling uneasily. There had seemed no risk in leaving him for a moment; he had had an appearance of being rooted there, or better perhaps, tethered.

‘But he said he liked dates,’ she repeated, bringing up reason to support her astonishment.