He replied happily: “I swear I’ll sit in this chair until you give me leave to get up. But why say it? You’ve never let me finish what I want to tell you. It has to be told now, or a month or six months or a year hence. It’s silly to waste time, so why not now? I’ve awakened from a long sleep to find myself in a world of marvels, in a new, throbbing England, and for the first time in my life every pulse in me throbs with my country. I must play my part in the big drama. I’ve also awakened to find even deeper and more passionate things gripping at my heart: My son, whom I never knew of. And you. You, Marcelle. No, no!” he laughed, “I’m not going to get up. I’ll put the point in the most phlegmatic way possible. I love you now as much as ever I did. I want to marry you at once. I’ve been pursuing shadows for half a century. I want to get into the substance of life at last. A man can’t do it by himself. He needs a woman, just as—to advance an abstract proposition—a woman needs a man. You’re the only woman in the world for me. Together, you and I, we can go forth strong into this wonderful conflict. You can help me, I can help you. If you’re tired and want rest, by God, you shall have it. You shan’t do a hand’s turn. But a smile and a whisper from you will fill me with strength for both of us. That’s the proposition.” She looked for a long time into the fire, her head aslant, her lips and fingers accompanying her thoughts in nervous movements. Presently she said, in a low voice: “A man like you would want the Sun, Moon and Stars.” “And would see that he got them,” said Baltazar. “They’re there right enough.” She shook her head despairingly. “That’s where you make the mistake. You would want what I couldn’t give—what isn’t in me to give. Don’t you see it’s no good? The whole thing is dead. I thought it was alive, but it isn’t. It’s dead. I’m dead. I suppose a nurse’s work eventually unsexes a woman. That’s frank enough, isn’t it?” “It’s a frank statement of a conclusion arrived at through fallacious reasoning,” replied Baltazar. She shivered. “These things have nothing to do with reason. In all these years haven’t you learned that?” “No,” said he. “Schopenhauer and his lot were idiots. Love is the apotheosis of reason. My dear,” he added, rising, “this is profitless argument. I’m getting up without your permission, but I’ll be as unobstreperous as thistledown. If you feel you can’t marry me, well, you can’t. The reasons you will find are perfectly logical—but throw away the rotten fallacy in your premise of sexlessness. You are woman all through, my dear, from your lips to your heart. Perhaps I’ve been rather like a bull at a gate—the gate of heaven. I suppose I was built like that. But if you’ll let us be friends, dear friends, I won’t worry you any more. I promise.” She broke down. Tears came. “I’m so sorry—so sorry. But you do understand, don’t you?”