"Otherwise—you monkey!" she said, laughing, free of the restraint and of the bright color that had made even her neck hot. "Very well," he said briskly; "keep your distance! Don’t start running after me the moment I come in sight across the landscape. Will you promise?" "I promise," she said solemnly. "Thank you. I shall have a little leisure now. I’ll have so much I won’t know what to do with it. Can you advise me?" "I cannot." "Then I’ll have to think for myself.... I’ll have to do something, of course.... Suppose you and I take a canoe——" "Canoes hold only two, Jack." "By Jove! What am I thinking of! Thank you for saving me from incredible suffering.... So suppose we don’t take a canoe, you and I, but we take the red runabout?" "Jack!" "What?" "The red runabout holds two, only." "I must be demented!" he said with a shudder.... "Silvette, I’ll tell you what we’ll do—we’ll take a walk, you and I. There’s room all around us for millions of other people. They can come if they like; if they don’t, why, it’s up to them!" "No, Jack." "Won’t it do?" "No. Why won’t you be a little bit serious about a matter that, after all, concerns me very nearly." "I _am_ serious," he said. "It concerns me, too." "No, it doesn’t." "Indeed, it does. Two people are not to go twosing any more; _I’m_ one of those people. Therefore, it concerns me, doesn’t it?" She looked at him, confused, half smiling, half reluctant. "Don’t you know," she said, "that your attention to me is worrying your father and mother?" He thought a moment, then slowly turned toward her a sober and youthful face, from which all humor had departed; and she looked back at him out of grave young eyes that met his very sweetly, but inexorably. "Do you mean it, Silvette?" "About your parents?" "Yes." "Yes, I do, Jack." He said, partly to himself: "I had not noticed it." "I have. It’s a woman’s business to notice such things. Otherwise, she’ll find herself in trouble.... Inclination is a silly guide, Jack." "For me?" "For—us both.... I will be frank with you all the way through. I do like you. I enjoy our tête-à-têtes. They are perfectly honest and harmless, and without significance—the significance, alas, that others will surely attach to them.... It isn’t that there’s anything wrong with you and me, Jack.... It’s the World that is wrong.... But—it’s the World; and you and I must conform to its prejudices as long as we inhabit it—at least _I_ must." "I suppose you must," he said. Then, leaning a little nearer, he took her hand, held it lightly across his palm, looked at it a moment, then at her. "Will you let me tell father and mother that I am in love with you, and wish to marry you?" he said. "Jack!" she exclaimed in consternation. "Will you let me?"