She led the way into the whispering pines, and sure enough he
did explain before they had gone a dozen yards.
"I had got an idea--I dare say wrongly--that you feel more at
home with me in a room."
"A room?" she echoed, hopelessly bewildered.
"Yes. Or, at the most, in a garden, or on a road. Never in the
real country like this."
"Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean? I have never felt anything of
the sort. You talk as if I was a kind of poetess sort of person."
"I don't know that you aren't. I connect you with a view--a
certain type of view. Why shouldn't you connect me with a room?"
She reflected a moment, and then said, laughing:
"Do you know that you're right? I do. I must be a poetess after
all. When I think of you it's always as in a room. How funny!"
To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.
"A drawing-room, pray? With no view?"
"Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?"
"I'd rather," he said reproachfully, "that connected me with the
open air."
She said again, "Oh, Cecil, whatever do you mean?"
As no explanation was forthcoming, she shook off the subject as
too difficult for a girl, and led him further into the wood,
pausing every now and then at some particularly beautiful or
familiar combination of the trees.
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