"What did you say?" she managed to ask. "I said: When you’re my wife. What else could you be? You didn’t propose to be a sister to me, did you? I’m impatient, dear. In your letter you wrote: ’Just when you wish.’ Didn’t you mean it?" She hid her burning face on his shoulder as she thought of what she had meant. And all the while his one idea had been marriage! His wife! Wife! Surely no word ever spoken could be so full of hallowed significance! ... What would he think of her if he knew what she had really meant? Ought she to tell him? Maidenly modesty counseled reserve, to take what the gods had given her. But would that be honest? Maggy, in her position, would have blurted out the truth at once in her downright way: "Married and respectable! Oh, my dear, I didn’t think you meant to include that in the program!" or some such easy phrase. But she was not Maggy, and words would not come. She heard Meer asking her how soon she could marry him; heard him outline a honeymoon in places that would cure her cough. And all the while she could say nothing. Meer, as happy as a schoolboy, was making an inspection of the room. Love lent a glamour to its cramped proportions and mean appurtenances. His eyes went to the small bed, resplendent now by reason of Maggy’s eiderdown; an exasperating little bed nevertheless because it made nearly as many sleep-dispelling noises as the too obtrusive cistern. "And that’s where you sleep!" he said softly. The lacy pillow-case with her monogram on it, another of Maggy’s gifts, lay uppermost. He bent and kissed it, then laughed diffidently and moved toward her. She shrank back a step, making a gesture with her hands that was almost supplicatory. "There’s something I must say. I owe it to you," she said with quick breaths. "You may not want to marry me when you know." He saw that she was nerving herself to make some confession. Her connection with the stage and his own intimate knowledge of it, gained through professional attendance on many of its members, brought the disquieting thought that it might have to do with that ethical laxity that pervades its atmosphere. But none-the-less his arms went round her. "I know the stage is a dashed hard place for a girl," he said gruffly. "So if it’s anything that’s finished and done with don’t tell me." She shook her head. "It’s to do with me ... now." "Not some other man?" "No. Only you; you are the only one there ever has been, or ever will be." "Then what in the world is wrong?" Alexandra’s words came tumbling out as though she feared her courage would evaporate before she could speak them. "You said the stage was a hard place for girls. It is. It’s all so wrong everywhere that the idea of a man proposing marriage is—is a surprise.... Oh, won’t you understand?" She clasped her hands tensely. "You need not marry me—unless you want to, because I—didn’t expect it."