Easter Sunday, and signs of spring - couples and singles walking their dogs, the yellows and reds of daffodils and tulips, magnolia trees in flower. They had stayed at his mother's the night before, and in the morning had attended the service at Owen's church, Country Club Christian. Ada, who had been only to Meeting, and a few Catholic funerals and baptisms, was unaccustomed to dresses on Sunday, even at Easter. She had been startled at the elaborate outfits and hats the women wore. Owen had explained that ten years ago, this was the day for which women and girls bought special outfits and wore white gloves. Things were less formal now, he said. Ada found this hard to believe.

Afterward, they had changed back into casual clothes and eaten a late breakfast. Then they'd spent an hour wandering the grounds of Linda Hall Library so she could see the plantings. Owen had admired the buildings while she wandered the grounds. Finally they went to Loose park, where he taught her card games - spades, hearts, gin rummy. She laughed and exclaimed how fun it was.

The cards were set aside. Owen lay on his back, staring at the clouds. The branches overhead were sheathed in a haze of green buds. The splashing of the fountain in the rose garden, and the irregular thonk of tennis balls from the courts nearby, punctuated the air. A yellow ball arced above the court, again and again, visible briefly at the top of its flight. The ground sloped down to their right, toward the duck pond. A girl with an easel, her back toward them, was painting the view.

Ada gave up inspecting the grasses around their blanket; she wasn't able to find a single species she was studying. "They're mostly exotics," she said. Her Ph.D. subject was prairie grasses.

She watched a family. The woman, baby in arms, rolled from left to right and back again, while the child laughed and squealed. It was young enough to be either a boy or a girl. Impossible to tell. The father, nearby, played frisbee with their dog, a German Shepherd mix. The dog made enormous leaps in the air to catch the spinning disk, never missing.

Owen sat up and took a sip of his root beer, now flat and warm. "What are you looking at?" he asked.

"That family." She nodded in their direction. "They seem happy."

"They seem ordinary."

"That's what I like about them. They're ordinary, and they're happy."

"I want you to be happy," he said.

"That's kind."

"You don't understand. We've been dating for three years."

"Owen, please don't ask me to marry you again. Please."

"Why not?"

"I can't do it. I just can't."

"But I'll be a good husband. I'll take care of you and send you to school and you won't - "

"You know I don't like to talk about money."

"Money is important," he said. She was ignoring him, and watching the family. "It is," he insisted. "Money means freedom."

"I don't care. You can't bribe me into marrying you."

"You know I love you."

"Stop," she said. "You're always pushing me with your love."

"You never listen. Why do you go out with me, if you don't even like me?"

"I do like you. I just don't love you."

"You don't have to love me. Just marry me. Other things are more important. Comradeship. Shared interests."

"If other things are more important, why are you always talking about how much you love me and want to marry me?"

She had him there.

"Owen," she said. "Owen, why do you keep saying this? Don't you understand yet that I don't feel the same? Why do you keep pushing this at me? Why do you insist on telling me how much you love me?"

She was using her gentle tone, using a voice a parent would when explaining an ethical point to a child. He loved that gentleness, but it annoyed him. He was careful not to show his irritation. "Because I do. Because that's just how it is. Because you're not like anyone else. I don't know. Does it matter?"

"Yes it matters. I want you to explain why you feel this way."

"I can't," he said.

" 'I can't?' That's what I always say. Then tell me why you can't tell me."

He was silent.

"Are you not sure? Don't you know why?"

"No. I know the reasons."

"You have to tell me, then. I will not consider marrying you until you explain your reasons. Marriage is too important to go into without knowing why you're doing it."

That meant that marriage was at least a possibility, and for a moment his skin tingled. "Let me think," he said.

The family put the child in the stroller, and the dog back on the leash, and left. Some of the tennis players must have gone, too; there were fewer sounds of tennis balls. Ada glanced at her watch.

She was wearing sandals and jeans and a wide-brimmed straw hat he had given her, and a tank top, with a bra strap visible on one side. Her shoulders were narrow, and a perfect milk white. He wanted to pull down the straps of her tank top and bra and run his lips over the skin beneath them, and strip off the rest of her clothes and take her over. He wanted to consume her.

"You aren't like anyone else," he blurted. "You're who you are. You can't be anything else. You're not fake. I can't be like that. But I need to be around it. It's - I don't know. I guess you're how I'd like to be."

She waited until it was apparent that he wasn't going to say anything more. "I see."

"Is that all? That's all you can say, 'I see'? I knew I shouldn't have told you."

"It seems so strange."

"Why?"

"You don't understand me. I'm not what you think."

A calculated gesture was called for. He closed his eyes and pressed the soda bottle against his right temple. Too bad it wasn't cold.

"Please don't do that," she said.

"Do what?"

"Never mind. I need to go home. I have tests to grade and a big lab report due Friday."

"Not yet."

"It's time to go. I have to work."

"We need to finish talking about this first."

"No. I can't marry you. We're too different, and I have to be alone anyway."

"Have to be alone? Who are you, Greta Garbo? Being alone isn't romantic."

"I know that."

"Then why do it?"

"It doesn't matter. I just do," she said. "I have to be alone."

"Did someone hurt you? Is that why?" She began to weep. "God, Ada. I wasn't trying to make you cry." He lay down and pulled her onto his chest and wrapped his arms around her. "Oh, God. What's wrong?"

She struggled until he let her go, then curled up next to him, her hands clutched under her chin. She wept noiselessly for a long time. "I'm sorry," she said when she was done. She sat up and turned her back to him, wiping her eyes. "I shouldn't have done that, it was unfair. I'm all right. Don't worry."

"No," he said. She didn't respond. "Look at me."

She turned around. She didn't look him in the eye, she looked at the opening of his shirt collar.

"Who was it?" he asked. "That musician?"

She nodded.

"What did he do?"

"Nothing." Her chin trembled. "He didn't do anything. It was me, not him. I'm the one who, who hurt me. And him."

"Are you still in love with him?"

She shook her head, then shrugged.

"You are, aren't you?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Is that why you won't marry me? Because of him?"

"No."

"Because you're afraid it will happen again. Because you're afraid of being hurt?"

She nodded.

"I promise. I promise there's nothing to be afraid of. I will never ever hurt you."

"Yes you will. You've already hurt me sometimes."

"Well, I love you. I need you. I'll do everything to make you happy."

"But I don't love you."

She sounded less certain now. He pressed the advantage. "What do you have to lose? How can you ever be happy, if you're too afraid to trust anyone? Don't you trust me?"

"Stop. Just hold me for a while. I'm lonely. Just hold me. Don't talk."

"What is it? What's wrong now?"

"Don't talk." She leaned against him. "Hold me, please. Sometimes I'm so lonely I can't bear it."

He opened his mouth to ask what she wanted, and then she sighed, and lay her head on his shoulder, and it was as if she had spoken again: Just hold me. He embraced her and thought about what she might want, and he remembered the way she had looked at the family, at the woman and child and man together, and he knew what to do. He could calculate this. He had had years of practice at this sort of thing.

They stayed and watched the annual children's Easter egg hunt, and she held his hand. She was quiet during the drive back to Lawrence, and kissed him many times when he dropped her off. She seemed reluctant to get out of the car.

"Please don't think I don't care," she said. "I do. I care very much. But you have to be patient. I've never been good at understanding my feelings, or deciding what to do."

It took him a year to talk her out of her doubts. She wanted to be persuaded. He saw her come around, doubtfully, slowly.

They were married late the next May, in the rose garden in the park, a hundred yards from where they had spent that Easter Sunday. She wanted a Quaker ceremony with only a few friends and family to witness it, a simple exchange in which each of them made a short promise to the other. He wanted an elaborate ceremony, and everyone they knew attending. She refused to wear the traditional gown. They compromised: a short ceremony with a minister, a simple dress, a few dozen friends and family. Afterward, a small reception at his mother's house.

He would have agreed to anything, even a ceremony in Sanskrit, or getting married in a cave. He knew that she had compromised because she believed she should, and because she thought these things were important to him. But they weren't. All he wanted was her. The trappings were irrelevant. Now his life would change, because Ada was his wife. This wonderful girl he loved was now his.