'About your uncle,' she said, nodding. 'I like him very much.' 'Enough to marry him?' 'Oh quite. I always like people enough to marry them.' And she added, as though in explanation of this perhaps rather excessively amiable tendency, 'Husbands are so kind.' 'You ought to know,' I conceded. 'I do,' said Dolly, with the sweetest reminiscent smile. 'Uncle Rudolph is only waiting to get you alone to propose,' I said. Dolly nodded. There was nothing I could tell her that she wasn't already aware of. 'As you appear to have noticed everything,' I said, 'I suppose you have also noticed that he is very much in love with you.' 'Oh yes,' said Dolly placidly. 'So much in love that he doesn't seem even to remember that he's a dignitary of the Church, and when he's alone with me he behaves in a way I'm sure the Church wouldn't like at all. Why, he almost swears.' '_Isn't_ it a good thing?' said Dolly, approvingly. 'Yes. But now what is to be done about Siegfried--' 'Dear Siegfried,' murmured Dolly. 'And Juchs--' 'Poor darling,' murmured Dolly. 'Yes, yes. But oughtn't Uncle Rudolph to be told?' 'Of course,' said Dolly, her eyes a little surprised that I should want to know anything so obvious. 'You told me it would kill Kitty if I knew about Juchs. It will kill her twice as much if Uncle Rudolph knows.' 'Kitty won't know anything about it. At least, not till it's all over. My dear, when it comes to marrying I can't be stuck all about with secrets.' 'Do you mean to tell my uncle yourself?' 'Of course,' said Dolly, again with surprise in her eyes. 'When?' 'When he asks me to marry him. Till he does I don't quite see what it has to do with him.' 'And you're not afraid--you don't think your second marriage will be a great shock to him? He being a dean, and nourished on Tables of Affinity?' 'I can't help it if it is. He has got to know. If he loves me enough it won't matter to him, and if he doesn't love me enough it won't matter to him either.' 'Because then his objections to Juchs would be greater than his wish to marry you?' 'Yes,' said Dolly, smiling. 'It would mean,' she went on, 'that he wasn't fond of me _enough_.' 'And you wouldn't mind?' Her eyes widened a little. 'Why should I mind?' 'No. I suppose you wouldn't, as you're not in love.' I then remarked that, though I could understand her not being in love with a man my uncle's age, it was my belief that she had never in her life been in love. Not even with Siegfried. Not with anybody. Dolly said she hadn't, and that she liked people much too much to want to grab at them. 'Grab at them!' 'That's what your being in love does,' said Dolly. 'It grabs.' 'But you've been grabbed yourself, and you liked it. Uncle Rudolph is certainly bent on grabbing you.'