“I am afraid I shall not know how to leave my aunt and uncle,” she said. “They grow nervous at the mere idea.” “Is there any need why you should leave them?” I asked. “Well, of course I am very devoted to them, but at the same time I think I am of rather an independent nature.” “You mean that you would prefer an establishment of your own?” “Well, yes, you see I have been spoilt. I have tasted freedom. Of course it will be difficult to explain to my aunt and uncle that I am quite devoted to them, that I am perfectly happy here, and yet that I want to set up my own house.” I laughed. “Yes, it will be rather difficult, although at the same time I perfectly understand what you mean.” “I suppose it seems unnatural for a single woman to want a place of her own; at any rate, until she’s thirty.” “It doesn’t run in the blood. A bachelor takes a private apartment, a spinster goes and lives in a boarding-house.” “I am afraid it is quite true,” she answered, laughing, and then, with that perfect frankness about her sex which was one of her characteristics, she added, “But we spinsters—at least, that is, the poor ones—have to get ourselves husbands. It is potential matrimony that fills the boarding-house.” “You consider matrimony a woman’s vocation?” I asked. “I do.” And she looked grave. My heart beat a little faster. I had made up my mind to put the question. I continued: “And do you think marriages are happier if based on a community of interests or on a passionate attachment?” She looked at me honestly. “I think,” she answered, “it is as impossible to generalise about marriage as about other things. It only leads to false conclusions. Of this, however, I am sure—if, when the flush of passion is past the interests of husband and wife lie apart, their chance of happiness cannot be very great. Don’t you agree?” I did agree, and embroidered her conclusions with even stronger argument. I was never cynical if I could help it with Miss Gascoyne; it made her uncomfortable, and she had once told me that she believed all cynics were rogues with a white feather. At least, she had read so somewhere, and it had struck her as being true. I went on to the discussion of romance. I talked vaguely of men who had loved women infinitely above them. “Even,” I ended, “as I love you, have always loved you, shall always love you. I suppose I ought to have kept silence, but I believe you are generous enough not to be angry with me for wishing you to know how much I value you above all other women.” I turned away apparently overcome, and watched the effect of my speech in a looking-glass. She was very moved, and her eyes filled with tears. “Why should you not tell me?” she murmured, after a pause. From my point of vantage I could see in her face that my cause was a winning one. “I ought not to have told you. I have hardly a shilling in the world. I owe everything to Mr. Gascoyne, whilst you——” I broke off.