"I would like to see you really _meaning_ something," he said, tightening his grip upon her. "You are only a reflection. I want to see your own light shining." "Is this a poem, Peter? Or are you trying to save my soul?" Would she never be serious? Peter was angry and miserable. His late brooding came to a point. He wanted to touch Vivette, and he wanted an excuse. He could not play her light game of pleasure without insisting that it was something more. Vivette saw the pain in his eyes. More gravely than she had yet spoken she said to him: "I might be very real, if only you believed it." He bent eagerly towards her: "I am going to kiss you, Vivette." Her eyes did not change. They were evasive still. Peter held her small face between his palms--the face of a happy child, with pleasure visibly in store. He had agreeably stirred her light senses. He turned abruptly away. "There is no feeling in you," he said. "Do you expect me to faint away?" "I want you to care." "Perhaps I do." "You really care?" "I care in my own way." They sat together by the fire, and Peter held her lightly beside him. This was no conquest, or rapture of intimacy. He could not believe that he had really moved her. The more he grew alive to her physical presence and the implication of her surrender, the more he desired a guarantee that their love should be permanent and true. He wanted an assurance that this adventure was not ignoble. He wanted again to be justified. He grew every instant more sensible of their intimacy. He tried to persuade himself that this was the real and perfect thing; that the stir of his senses, under which he weakly drooped, was the call of two passionate hearts. He wavered absurdly. Once he suffered an impulse to take Vivette brutally, without disguise, as an offered pastime. Then he shrank from so immediate a declension from his vanishing idealism, and inwardly clamoured that he loved her. There he ultimately fixed his mind. He looked at Vivette and found in her an increasing gravity. She was becoming aware of Peter's trouble. She was beginning to understand it, and to be seriously concerned. But Peter mistook her dawning compassion. He caught eagerly at the sober spirit which now possessed her. He suddenly heard himself propose to her. "Will you marry me, Vivette?" He saw the laughter leap into her eyes; but, even as he shrank, it passed, and they lit with affectionate pity. "Peter," she said very gently, "do you know what you are talking about?" "I have asked you to marry me." "Of course not." "You do not care enough?" he suggested. "I care enough to-night. But there is next year and the year after that." "I want to be sure that this is serious," said Peter, with clenched hands. "Of course it is. It is more serious than I thought anything could be."