After a couple of turns, to Gay's disappointment, for he was a perfect dancer, Chris steered her towards one of the doors, and led her down a corridor to a sitting-out place, which looked more secluded than it was. Here he deposited the astonished Gay, and sat down beside her. He said nothing for a moment or two, and when he spoke, perhaps she had an inkling of what was coming. "Gay, dear," he said, "I've got something to say to you, and I don't know how to begin." He turned, and looked at her in her pretty white frock, and little Empire wreath of vivid green leaves, but made no effort to take her hand or touch her, for he was particularly undemonstrative, and disliked nothing more than to see a man "mauling" a woman about--a description he applied to the average man's way of making love. Gay said nothing. She longed to be able to help him, and to save him pain if she could, for now the inkling had become a conviction, and oh! how she did wish that he wouldn't-- Free from all conceit as she was, she hated to have to give him the answer she had given so many other men. And she was not far out, as Chris's words, very much to the point, proved. "Will you marry me, Gay?" he said, very quietly, but with a little tremor in his clear voice. "I know it's great cheek asking you, and I can't do it in the proper way--the way they do in books, I mean," he explained. Although very nervous, Gay could not repress a smile. "We've known each other a considerable time now, and though, of course, while my mother was alive, the idea of marriage never occurred to me, for she made me so happy--" he paused, then blurted out: "You must not think that I'm asking you to fill her place, or make up to me for her loss--no one could ever do that, not even you, dear little girl." Gay, with tears in her eyes, in quick sympathy touched his hand--even if he took this for encouragement, she could not help it. "I'm very lonely," Chris went on, "but it's because I love you for your dear self, and think the world and all of you, that I ask you to marry me. I'm very awkward at professing, I know, but you understand, don't you? You always do." "Yes, I understand," Gay replied, as she dried her eyes with a tiny handkerchief. "Poor, dear old boy, I know--but oh, Chris--" "Can't you?" he asked earnestly, leaning a little towards her, his clean-cut face looking thinner and sharper in the dim light. "We could be very happy." "There are so many things in the way," Gay said. "It isn't because I don't care for you--you know that. There's Frank, you see, he's so helpless even as it is, and without me he'd go all to bits." "He could live with us," suggested Chris, eager to overcome such a trifling difficulty as this seemed. "I don't want to marry anybody for ever so long, Chris. Can't you understand that I want to have a good time--be a _girl_ as long as I can?" she said a little piteously. "And Trotting is my last, or, rather, my new love."