Page 84 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

"The workbasket," I say.

She does not answer.

"Mrs. Collins's workbasket. The green worsted, all across the carpet. Was there ever a workbasket, Elizabeth?"

Her lips move. "No."

"Did I sit down beside you?"

"No."

"Did I say I had been happier in an hour of your company than in a year of anyone else's?"

She closes her eyes. "No."

"Did I say I would rather be laughed at by you than admired by the whole world?"

"No." It is hardly a sound at all.

"Did I ask you if I might kiss you? And did you say not yet?"

A tear runs down her face. She does not wipe it away.

"No," she says.

"Then what did I say?"

She opens her eyes.

"You said," she whispers, "that you had struggled in vain. That my family was beneath you. That loving me was a degradation, against your will and your reason and your character. And you asked me to end your suffering."

The nightingale has stopped singing. I do not know when it stopped. The garden is very quiet. From the house, faint and far off, comes Mrs. Bennet's laughter, and the clink of a cup.

"And you," I say, "told me I was the last man in the world."

"Yes."

"And when you told me, in my aunt's bedchamber, that you cried buckets."

She looks at me. Her mouth is trembling.

"Did you cry, Elizabeth?"

"Afterward," she says. "After you had gone. I sat in Charlotte's chair, and I cried. Yes."

"Not when I asked."

"No."

"Not for joy."

She does not answer that. She does not need to.

I stand up.

I do not decide to. My legs simply do it. I stand in the dark garden with the lilac brushing my shoulder, and I look down at her, sitting there in my coat, in the place where I kissed her not a quarter of an hour ago, where I said I want to remember this night when I am an old man.

I shall remember it. She has seen to that.