Now, I believe I know you well enough to be right in saying that the--shall I call it the strictly eugenic?--side of the question is not likely to suffer from your neglect. Newnham and the W.S.P.U. will have taken care of that. Nor is there anything, in the present case, to trouble you from this point of view. For Arthur Lynn is a sound, healthy, athletic young man, four years your senior, of good stock and sufficiently satisfactory means and prospects. Both physically and in every other way he would be a desirable husband for you. And all this, as I gather from your letter, you have been very carefully, and very rightly, considering. Moreover you can be quite sure--you probably _are_ quite sure--that there is no one whom your mother and I would sooner have for a son-in-law, as I am writing to tell him this evening. No, my dear, I don't think that your danger lies in a too slender application of reason to the problem before you. It lurks, if anywhere, in a too great disregard of what is often supposed to be its antithesis. And I should like you to have written to me, not only that you were 'naturally pleased, of course, if a little perplexed,' but that you were _thrilled_. To which, no doubt, you will reply that in the first place you're not the sort of young woman that indulges in thrills, and in the second that, had you done so, you would certainly never have committed the fact to paper. But I should have read it between the lines. Ah, Molly, don't ever be _too_ afraid of thrills. For at the worst (the most _bourgeois_) they are at any rate evidences of life, not only within but without--some all-pervading force, short-circuited for a moment through your own awakened consciousness to that old, old world on which you stand; while at the best--well, who shall say from what unseen Vessel the current has its birth? Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out; heaven is my need. Was it like that with you, Molly? Because that is how I would have it for you, my dear. And I think it is worth waiting for, not for a week only, as you have suggested to Arthur, but for far longer than that. You will tell me, very likely, and with perfect truth, to remember that wherever marriages may be said to have their hypothetical origin, in actual practice they must needs evolve upon earth. And that's a side of the question, no doubt, that a good many people are inclined to forget. But you're not one of them. And I should like you to give Heaven a chance, not only for your own sake, but for your future husband's, whoever he may ultimately be. Husbands need a little halo, you see, at any rate to begin with. And that's why I should like you to wait awhile--say six months or so--even at the risk of causing young Lynn a little gentle (but quite harmless) unhappiness. And when--and if--he comes to you then (for you mustn't allow him to promise) let your heart have no doubt in its yes. Your affect. father, P. H. XV