“What time is it, Harry?”
“Just past two.”
“Are you going below?”
“Oh no; not tonight. I prefer pure air.”
She fancied he might be displeased with her for coming to him at this unearthly hour. “I should like to stay here too, if you will allow me,” she said timidly. “I want to ask you things.”
“Allow you, Elfie!” said Knight, putting his arm round her and drawing her closer. “I am twice as happy with you by my side. Yes: we will stay, and watch the approach of day.”
So they again sought out the sheltered nook, and sitting down wrapped themselves in the rug as before.
“What were you going to ask me?” he inquired, as they undulated up and down.
“Oh, it was not much—perhaps a thing I ought not to ask,” she said hesitatingly. Her sudden wish had really been to discover at once whether he had ever before been engaged to be married. If he had, she would make that a ground for telling him a little of her conduct with Stephen. Mrs. Jethway’s seeming words had so depressed the girl that she herself now painted her flight in the darkest colours, and longed to ease her burdened mind by an instant confession. If Knight had ever been imprudent himself, he might, she hoped, forgive all.
“I wanted to ask you,” she went on, “if—you had ever been engaged before.” She added tremulously, “I hope you have—I mean, I don’t mind at all if you have.”
“No, I never was,” Knight instantly and heartily replied. “Elfride”—and there was a certain happy pride in his tone—“I am twelve years older than you, and I have been about the world, and, in a way, into society, and you have not. And yet I am not so unfit for you as strict-thinking people might imagine, who would assume the difference in age to signify most surely an equal addition to my practice in lovemaking.”
Elfride shivered.
“You are cold—is the wind too much for you?”
“No,” she said gloomily. The belief which had been her sheet-anchor in hoping for forgiveness had proved false. This account of the exceptional nature of his experience, a matter which would have set her rejoicing two years ago, chilled her now like a frost.
“You don’t mind my asking you?” she continued.
“Oh no—not at all.”
“And have you never kissed many ladies?” she whispered, hoping he would say a hundred at the least.
The time, the circumstances, and the scene were such as to draw confidences from the most reserved. “Elfride,” whispered Knight in reply, “it is strange you should have asked that question. But I’ll answer it, though I have never told such a thing before. I have been rather absurd in my avoidance of women. I have never given a woman a kiss in my life, except yourself and my mother.” The man of two and thirty with the experienced mind warmed all over with a boy’s ingenuous shame as he made the confession.
“What, not one?” she faltered.
“No; not one.”
“How very strange!”
“Yes, the reverse experience may be commoner. And yet, to those who have observed their own sex, as I have, my case is not remarkable. Men about town are women’s favourites—that’s the postulate—and superficial people don’t think far enough to see that there may be reserved, lonely exceptions.”
“Are you proud of it, Harry?”
“No, indeed. Of late years I have wished I had gone my ways and trod out my measure like lighter-hearted men. I have thought of how many happy experiences I may have lost through never going to woo.”
“Then why did you hold aloof?”
“I cannot say. I don’t think it was my nature to: circumstance hindered me, perhaps. I have regretted it for another reason. This great remissness of mine has had its effect upon me. The older I have grown, the more distinctly have I perceived that it was absolutely preventing me from liking any woman who was not as unpractised as I; and I gave up the expectation of finding a nineteenth-century young lady in my own raw state. Then I found you, Elfride, and I felt for the first time that my fastidiousness was a blessing. And it helped to make me worthy of you. I felt at once that, differing as we did in other experiences, in this matter I resembled you. Well, aren’t you glad to hear it, Elfride?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered in a forced voice. “But I always had thought that men made lots of engagements before they married—especially if they don’t marry very young.”
“So all women think, I suppose—and rightly, indeed, of the majority of bachelors, as I said before. But an appreciable minority of slowcoach men do not—and it makes them very awkward when they do come to the point. However, it didn’t matter in my case.”
“Why?” she asked uneasily.
“Because you know even less of lovemaking and matrimonial prearrangement than I, and so you can’t draw invidious comparisons if I do my engaging improperly.”
“I think you do it beautifully!”
“Thank you, dear. But,” continued Knight laughingly, “your opinion is not that of an expert, which alone is of value.”
Had she answered, “Yes, it is,” half as strongly as she felt it, Knight might have been a little astonished.
“If you had ever been engaged to be married before,” he went on, “I expect your opinion of my addresses would be different. But then, I should not—”
“Should not what, Harry?”
“Oh, I was merely going to say that in that case I should never have given myself the pleasure of proposing to you, since your freedom from that experience was your attraction, darling.”
“You are
