Chapter 16 - Page 2

her
past, strove to assail her crudely. Them, with unerring womanly
instinct, she early discerned, and with unerring feminine tact,
undeceived and humbled. Others, genuinely attracted by her beauty
and her patience, paid real court to her heart; but all these fell
far short of her ideal standard. With Harvey Kynaston it was
different. She admired him as a thinker; she liked him as a man;
and she felt from the first moment that no friend, since Alan died,
had stirred her pulse so deeply as he did.

For some months they met often at the Fabian meetings and
elsewhere; till at last it became a habit with them to spend their
Sunday mornings on some breezy wold in the country together.
Herminia was still as free as ever from any shrinking terror as to
what "people might say;" as of old, she lived her life for herself
and her conscience, not for the opinion of a blind and superstitious
majority. On one such August morning, they had taken the train from
London to Haslemere, with Dolly of course by their side, and then
had strolled up Hind Head by the beautiful footpath which mounts at
first through a chestnut copse, and then between heather-clad hills
to the summit. At the loneliest turn of the track, where two purple
glens divide, Harvey Kynaston seated himself on the soft bed of
ling; Herminia sank by his side; and Dolly, after awhile, not
understanding their conversation, wandered off by herself a little
way afield in search of harebells and spotted orchises. Dolly found
her mother's friends were apt to bore her; she preferred the society
of the landlady's daughters.

It was a delicious day. Hard by, a slow-worm sunned himself on the
basking sand. Blue dragon-flies flashed on gauze wings in the
hollows. Harvey Kynaston looked on Herminia's face and saw that
she was fair. With an effort he made up his mind to speak at last.
In plain and simple words he asked her reverently the same question
that Alan had asked her so long ago on the Holmwood.

Herminia's throat flushed a rosy red, and an unwonted sense of
pleasure stole over that hard-worked frame as she listened to his
words; for indeed she was fond of him. But she answered him at
once without a moment's hesitation. "Harvey, I'm glad you ask me,
for I like and admire you. But I feel sure beforehand my answer
must be NO. For I think what you mean is to ask, will I marry
you?"

The man gazed at her hard. He spoke low and deferentially. "Yes,
Herminia," he replied. "I do mean, will you marry me? I know,
of course, how you feel about this matter; I know what you have
sacrificed, how deeply you have suffered, for the sake of your
principles. And that's just why I plead with you now to ignore