'
'Of course you can. Considering I'm engaged to you, it's only proper.'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Yes,' he said, 'you may not be engaged to me, but I'm engaged to you.
That's what I've decided.'
She laughed. 'You'll find it rather dull, I'm afraid.'
'No,' he said. 'I can do things for you.' She was struck by that
simple statement, spoilt by his next words: 'Like these chocolates.'
He was very insistent about the chocolates and proud of his idea. She
thanked him. 'But I don't want you to give me things.'
'You can't stop me. I'm doing it all the time.'
They had reached the highest point of the hill and they halted at the
railing on the cliff's edge. Below them, the blackness of earth gave
way to the blackness of air and the shining blackness of water, and
slowly the opposing cliff cleared itself from a formless mass into the
hardly seen shapes of rock and tree. Here was beauty, here was
something permanent in the midst of change, and it seemed as though
the hand of peace were laid on Henrietta. For a moment the episode on
the other side of the water and the problem it involved took their
tiny places in the universe instead of the large ones in her life and,
strangely enough, it was Charles Batty who loomed up big, as though he
had some odd fellowship with immensity and beauty.
'What do you give me?' she asked. 'I don't want it, you know, but tell
me.'
'I told you that night when you listened and took it all.
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