Between his dream of a Model Village, of which he was proud, and something else for which he felt a little apologetic, Cosimo did not quite know where he was; but he knew that he wanted Amory. A soft "Ow!" came from the huddle on the other bench; it rather put Cosimo off for a moment or two; but all was silent again, and he took heart. He altered his position, and ran his arm along the back of the bench.
"Do you really think, Amory----" he began huskily.
"Eh?" said Amory. Apparently he had startled her. She had been quite lost in abstraction.
"Do you think that's the choice--for me?"
"The choice?... Oh, I see! You mean what I was saying. Well, Cosimo, what do you think yourself?"
"I don't know. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth while my thinking when you're here. I want you to tell me."
"I don't think," Amory answered slowly, "that in cases like this one person has really the right to settle things for another. As you know, I hate the word Conscience; I prefer the expression Personal Will; but that's what it seems to me to be."
"But in so many things my will's yours, Amory. You see deeper than I. You're constructive. You're one of the world's Makers of Things. I should be a very good lieutenant or something, but I'm quite without the creative gift. Won't you help me to do all those beautiful things, Amory?"
But evidently Amory didn't understand him. She replied, with quick eagerness--
"Gladly--oh, so gladly! You know you have only to ask, Cosimo, now or at any time."
"I--I don't mean that exactly," he stammered. "That's splendid, that part in the _Crown of Wild Olive_, I know, but--but--I mean something else, Amory--dear----"
His hand had slipped from the back of the bench; softly it lay on Amory's shoulder. He could hardly believe that it had lain there many times before, it lay so differently softly now. And yet Amory did not seem to recognize the difference in the softness, nor did she appear conscious that he had called her "dear" in a tone he had never used before. She put her finger-tips lightly on his knee. "Wait a bit," she said. "I have it on the tip of my tongue--it's not the _Crown of Wild Olive_; it's _Sesame and Lilies_--you know--that passage about gossiping with housemaids and stableboys when you might be conversing with kings and queens--I shall remember it in a moment----"