'They don't mean London; they mean science,' said Franklin, smiling back at her. She always made him feel happy for himself, and at ease, even when he was feeling unhappy for her; and just now he was feeling strangely, deeply unhappy for her. It wasn't humility, in the usual sense, that showed his coming offer to him as so inadequate; he did not think of himself as unworthy; but he did think of himself as incongruous; and that this fine, sad, subtle creature should be brought, from merely reasonable motives, to taking the incongruous intimately into her life made him more unhappy for her than usual. He wished he wasn't so incongruous; he wished he had something besides friendship and millions; he wished, almost, that his case was hopeless and that friendship and millions would not gain her. Yet, under these wishes, which made his face look tired and jaded, was another feeling; it was too selfless to be called a wish; rather it was a wonder, deep and melancholy, as to what was being done to him, and what would be done, as an end of it all. That something had been done he knew; it was because of Helen--that was one thing at last seen clearly--that he had not, long ago, left London. 'Science is perfectly impersonal, perfectly cosmopolitan, you know,' he went on. 'Now you are intensely personal and intensely local.' 'I don't think of myself as London, then, if I'm local,' said Helen, her eyes on the fire. 'I think of myself as Scotland, in the moorlands, on a bleak, grey day, when the heather is over and there's a touch of winter in the wind. You don't know the real me.' 'I'd like to,' said Franklin, quietly and unemphatically. They sat for a little while in silence, and Helen, so unconscious of what was approaching her, seemed in no haste to break it. She was capable of sitting thus in silent musing, her cheek on her hand, her eyes on the fire, for half an hour with Mr. Kane beside her. Franklin was reflecting. It wouldn't do to put it to her as her need; it must be put to her as his; as his reasonable need for the castle, the princess, the charming wife, the home, and children. And it must be that need only, the need of the dry, matter-of-fact friend who could give her a little and to whom she could give much. To hint at other needs--if other needs there were--would not be in keeping with the spirit of the transaction, and would, no doubt, endanger it. He well remembered old Miss Buchanan's hint; it was as a husband that Helen might contemplate him, not as a lover. 'Miss Buchanan,' he said at last, 'you don't consider that love, romantic love, is necessary in marriage, do you? I've gathered more than once from remarks of yours that that point of view is rather childish to you.'