The quiet settled down. Desire crept closer. They had been sitting facing. “I guess you’re badly hurt. You thought that all girls wanted to get married, and to have little babies and a kind man to take care of them.” When he tried to answer her, she placed her hand upon his mouth. He held it there with his own, as though it had been a flower. “I’m glad we got mad,” she whispered; “it’s made us real. It’s nice to be real sometimes. But I don’t know what to say to you--what to do to you. I haven’t played fair. At first I thought you were like all the rest. I know I’m responsible.” She snuggled up to him like a weary child. “I’m at the cross-roads.--Don’t kiss me--you put me out when you do that. Just put your arms about me so that I feel safe. I--I want to tell you.” “Then tell me, Princess.” “I’m two persons. There’s the me that I am now, and the other me that’s horrid.” “I love them both.” “You don’t. The me that’s horrid is a spiteful little cat, and I may become the horrid me at any moment Meester Dèek, you’d have to marry us both. I’m not a restful person at the best. I can never say the kind things that I feel. Most of the time I ought to be whipped and shaken. I suppose if I fell really in love it might be different.” “Then fall really in love.” She seemed to ponder his advice. “My love’s such a feeble little trickle. Yours is so deep and wide; mine would be lost in it And yet I do like you. I speak to you the way I speak to no other man. I could go on speaking to you forever. If I’d seen as much of any other man, he’d have bored me long ago.” “And isn’t that just saying that you do love me?” “Perhaps.” Her head stirred against his shoulder. Then: “No. That’s only saying that you’ve not found fault with me and that you’ve let me be selfish. You need some one who’ll be to you what your mother has been to your father. I’ll hate her when you find her; but, oh, Meester Deek, there are heaps of better girls in the world. I can’t cook, can’t sew, can’t even be agreeable very often. I want to live, and make mistakes, and then experiment afresh.--Perhaps I don’t know what I want. I feel more than friendship for you, but much less than love, because if it were love, it would stop at nothing. Oh, I know, though you don’t think it. Perhaps one day, when I’m older and wiser, I’ll look back and regret to-night. But I’m not going to let you spoil your life.” “You’d make it.” “Spoil it.” She released herself from him. He helped her to rise. “I’ve at least been an education for your soul. Do say it. I haven’t done you nothing but harm, have I?” His emotion choked him. She came and leant her forehead against his shoulder. “Do say it. Have I?” “You darling kiddy, you’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me.” “I have my own little religion,” she whispered. “I shall say a prayer for you to-night.” “Will you pray that one day you may be my wife?”