"Why, Mr. Gerald," I says, "I'd as soon think of loving the president." "Don't bother about him," he says. "Love me." Some more folks came in then to see the Chartron, and I never saw him any more that night till they were leaving. Then he told me Miss Antoinette was going back on Sunday, but he'd run me in town on Monday morning, if I'd go. I said I'd go. It was raining that Monday morning, and everything smelled sort of old-fashioned and nice, and the rain beat in our faces. "Cosma," he said, "don't keep me waiting." "Why not?" I said. I can see just the way the road went stretching in front of us. I looked at it, and I thought _why not_, _why not_.... I'd been saved from Katytown. I'd been saved from Luke, from Mr. Carney, from the factory. I'd been given my school, and now this chance. _Why not?_ "Because I love you so much that it isn't fair to me," he said. And he thought he was answering what I had said, but instead he was really answering what I had thought. "You like your new life, don't you?" he said. "Why not have it all the time, then? And if you love me, even a little, I can make you happy--I know I can." "And could I make you happy?" I said. "Gad!" said Mr. Gerald. The road was empty in the soft beating rain. With the slow and perfectly sure way he did everything he ran the car to the curb and turned to me. "Cosma," he said. I looked at him. Just a word of mine, and my whole life would be settled, to be lived with him, and with all that I began to suspect I was meant to have. I kept looking at him. I felt a good deal the way I had felt when I looked at a long-distance telephone and knew, with a word, I could talk a thousand miles. And I didn't feel much more. He took me in his arms and drew my wet face close to his, that was warm, as his lips were warm. "I want you for my wife," he said. It seemed so wonderful that he should love me that I thought mostly about that, and not about whether I loved him at all. I sat still and said: "I don't see how you can love me. There's so much I've got to learn yet, before I'm like the ones you know." "You're adorable," he said; "you're glorious. I love you. I want you with me always.... Cosma! Say maybe. Say just that!" So then I did the thing so many girls had done before me and will do after me: "Well, then," I said, "maybe." He frightened me, he was so glad. I felt left out. I wished that I was glad like that. But it was surprising how much more confidence I had in myself after I knew that a man like Mr. Gerald loved me. "That's because," I said to me, "women have counted only when men have loved them." And I thought that had ought to be different. CHAPTER IX One day toward spring I went down to see Mrs. Bingy. She had three women in her room every day, making the lace. She had regular customers from the shops. When I went in she was in a good black dress and was sitting holding the baby, that was beginning now to talk.