"Lots of girls--most girls in the position I want you to take--are still at school then. Only a year, dear child, and then if you will have me, we'll get married. I don't think you'd be bored down in Hampshire. I have thousands of books and you shall read them all. Don't get into your head that I'm asking you to marry me because I'm sorry for you--" "There's nothing to be sorry for," Sylvia interrupted, sharply. "I know there's not, and I want you terribly. You fascinate me to an extent I never could have thought possible for any woman. I really haven't cared much about women; they always seemed in the way. I do believe you would be happy with me. We'll travel to the East together. You shall visit Japan and Turkey. I love you so much, Sylvia. Tell me, don't you love me a little?" "I like you very much indeed," she answered, gently. "Oh, very, very, very much. Perhaps I love you. I don't think I love you, because if I loved you I think my heart would beat much faster when you asked me to marry you, and it isn't beating at all. Feel." She put his hand upon her heart. "It certainly doesn't seem to be unusually rapid," he agreed. Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes without their glasses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was touched by his kindness. "If you think I ought to go to school," she offered, "I will go to school." He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her answer about school. "I won't promise to marry you," she said. "Because I like to keep promises and I can't say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I'm changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don't forget that." He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet. "Have you told your sister about me?" Sylvia asked. "Not yet," he confessed. "I think I won't tell anybody about you except the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you." Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but that he had always been afraid at the last moment. "Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?" Sylvia said. He put on his glasses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarrassed. She laughed.