Occasionally Chilian spoke of her marriage--he had always said she was too young, in a protesting manner. So on one occasion she gained courage. "Do you mean--that is--you would like to--have me married, Cousin Chilian?" Married! It was as if she had given him a stab. And yet was not that just the thing he had been thinking of? "Why, you see, Cynthia," he made his voice purposely cold, "I am much older than you. I may die some day. Cousin Eunice will no doubt go before me, and you would not like to go on alone. Then Giles is older even than I. One has to think of these things. Yes, it would be nice to know you were happily settled." "And why couldn't a woman live alone as well as a man? I could have Miss Winn, and a housekeeper, and a man----" "It's a lonely life for a woman." "But why not for a man?" "Oh, well, that is different. Only a few men do. And they grow queer and opinionated." A fortnight ago she would have protested and said, "You are not old, you are not opinionated," in her eager, girlish manner. Now she was hurt, and she could not tell why; so she kept silent. And she began to note a change in him. The delightful harmony in which they had lived fell below the major key into minors, that touched and pierced her. He did not come so often to listen to her music, to ask her for a song, to watch while she painted some pretty flower, to go around with her training roses, or cutting them for the house. She put a few of them everywhere; she did not like great bunches, only such things as grew in clusters, lilacs and syringas and long sprays of clematis. She missed the little walks around, and the dear talks they used to have. She felt somewhat deceitful in planning adroitly. She made Miss Winn go to church with her, and when they came home with Mr. Saltonstall they sat on the porch together. A girl thinking of a lover would have asked him in. Then she went down to Boston, and Anthony came over as often as he could. Surely there was no danger with him. All this time Chilian Leverett was having a hard fight with himself. He was really ashamed of having been conquered by what he called a boy's romantic passion. He could excuse himself for the early lapse; he was a boy then. His honor and what he called good sense were mightily at war with this desire that well-nigh overmastered him. True, men older than he had married young wives. But this child had been entrusted to him in a sacred fashion by her dying father; he must place before her the best and richest of life, even if it condemned him to after-years of joyless solitude.