“And are you not – going to do that?” Melina enquired hesitantly
“I somehow knew that you would look as you look tonight,” Bing went on as if he had not heard her question.
“I imagined us together in a garden such as this. I told myself I would put my arms round you and say, ‘You haven’t known me very long, Melina, but I swear to you that I will make you a good husband and that if it lies within my power I will make you the happiest woman in the world’.”
Bing’s voice had died away and then suddenly he had pulled her into his arms and was holding her so tightly to him that she felt as if he crushed the very breath out of her body.
“I wanted to say that,” he muttered in a kind of agony. “I wanted to say that. And now I can’t.”
“But, why – why not?”
Melina looked up at him and realised
