“I know,” said the girl desperately. “But the terror of making a mistake. . . .” “Aren’t you digging too deep?” said Nicholas. “If somebody offers me a drink and I feel thirsty, I jolly well take it. So long as it’s honest liquor, I don’t bother about their motives. If I assume anything, I assume that they wouldn’t ask me if they didn’t want me to have it.” “You’re not going to compare marriage to a Martini?” “They’re much the same. A happy marriage is like a slap-up cocktail, the effect of which never passes off. . . . Well, if a man doesn’t offer another a tenpenny drink unless he wants him to have it, d’you seriously think he’s going to offer his heart, his home, his name, his fortune, his future to any daughter of Eve that ever was foaled—unless he wants her to have ’em?” “Prosper Le Gai did.” “Only to save Isoult’s neck. And, though she knew that, she took him. What’s more, my lady, it was a great success.” Susan began to shake with laughter. “That was an unfortunate instance, wasn’t it?” she said. “You know, you’re too well read. I should have got away with that with most of the people I know.” “It’s a question of Greeks meeting,” said Nicholas John. “Or deeps calling. We’ve more or less the same tastes. I think you like the dawn and the silence of high places and the roar of the woods when the wind is laying on——” “And the thud and suck of the surf and the baby talk of a brook and great cotton-wool clouds in the sky and a wind you can lean against. . . . Oh, I should think I do.” For a moment the girl was transfigured. Sitting upright, her grave eyes shining, her lips parted and her sweet pretty head thrown back, she might have been some Nereid out of some Odyssey. His eyes ablaze, Kilmuir regarded her, fascinated. . . . Then she lowered her head, and the light in her eyes died. “But that sort of life’s not for me,” she said abstractedly. “Look here,” said Nicholas John. “D’you want that sort of life?” “What d’you mean?” “What I say—as usual,” said Kilmuir. He waved his hand. “Would you like to wash all this out? Would you like to get down to Nature? Spend nine months of the year under her wing? Sell this mess for a birthright? Know the rain on your face, and——” “Are you offering me a land-agent’s job?” The man looked at his finger-tips. “It’s more of a stewardship,” he said. “There’s a post at my place in Scotland which you could fill—most admirably. It’s been vacant—oh, twenty years now, because I could never find the right person to take it on.” Susan put a hand to her head. “It—it sounds like a fairy-tale,” she said. “A girl—steward. . . . Of course, you’re making this up—creating some sinecure out of compassion for me.”