‘You don’t expect me to confess the truth to you, do you?’ she answered. ‘You have not yet learned everything, I see.’ She paused and regarded him for some time in silence. ‘I don’t know why,’ she said at last, ‘but this seems as if it were the prelude to a fight. I feel as I used to feel when I fought with Lucian--there was always a lot of talk before the tearing and rending began. I feel talky now, and I also feel that I must fight you. To begin with, just remember that I am a woman and you’re a man. I don’t know anything about men--they’re incomprehensible to me. To begin with, why do you wish to marry me?--you’re the first man who ever did. I want to know why--why--why?’ ‘Because you’re the woman for me and I’m the man for you,’ he replied masterfully. ‘You are my mate.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘I feel it.’ ‘Then why don’t I feel it?’ she asked quickly. ‘Are you dead certain you don’t?’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I think, perhaps, that if you could just get deep down into yourself, you do.’ ‘But that doesn’t explain why you want to marry me,’ she said inconsequently. ‘You tell me that what I have always felt for Lucian is not what I ought to feel for the man I love. Well, if I analyse what I feel for Lucian, perhaps it is what you say it is--a sense of protection, of wanting to help, and to shield; but then, you say that that is the sort of love you have for me.’ ‘Did I?’ he said, laughing quietly. ‘You forget that I have not yet told you what sort of love I have for you--we have not reached the love-making stage yet.’ Sprats felt femininity assert itself. She knew that she blushed, and she felt very hot and very uncomfortable, and she wished Saxonstowe would not smile. She was as much a girl and just as shy of a possible lover as in her tom-boy days, and there was something in Saxonstowe’s presence which aroused new tides of feeling in her. He had become bold and masterful; it was as if she were being forced out of herself. And then he suddenly did a thing which sent all the blood to her heart with a wild rush before it leapt back pulsing and throbbing through her body. Saxonstowe spoke her name. ‘Millicent!’ he said, and laid his hand very gently on hers. ‘Millicent!’ She drew away from him quickly, but her eyes met his with courage. ‘My name!’ she said. ‘No one ever called me by my name before. I had half forgotten it.’ ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I want you to think all this over, like the woman you are. Don’t waste your life on a dream or a delusion. Come to me and be my wife and friend so long as God lets us live. You are a true woman--a woman in a thousand. I would not ask you else. I will be a true man to you. And you and I together can do great things, for others. Think, and tell me your thoughts--afterwards.’