"Oh--if you're going to mock my holiest sentiments," he said lightly--and withdrew from the attack. The moment seemed to flutter near again when she said good night to him in the porch where the violet clematis swung against his head as he stood. This time his opening was better inspired. "Dolly, dear," he said, "how am I ever to go away?" Her heart leaped against her side, for his tone was tender. But so may a cousin's tone be--even a second cousin's, and when one is thirty-five she has little to fear from the pitying tenderness of her relations. "I am so glad you have liked being here," she said sedately. "You must come again some time." "I don't want to go away at all," he said. "Dolly, won't you let me stay--won't you marry me?" Almost as he took her hand she snatched it from him. "You must be mad!" she said. "Why on earth should you want to marry me?" Also she said: "I am old and plain, and you don't love me." But she said it to herself. "I do want it," he said, "and I want it more than I want anything." His tone was convincing. "But why? but why?" An impulse of truth-telling came to Robert. "Because it's all so beautiful," he said with straightforward enthusiasm. "All your lovely quiet life--and the house, and these old gardens, and the dainty, delicate, firm way you have of managing everything--the whole thing's my ideal. It's perfect--I can't bear any other life." "I'm afraid you'll have to," she said with bitter decision. "I am not going to marry a man just because he admires my house and garden, and is good enough to appreciate my methods of household management. Good night." She had shaken his hand coolly and shut the front door from within before he could find a word. He found one as the latch clicked. "Fool!" he said to himself, and stamped his foot. Dorothea ran up the stairs two at a time to say the same word to herself in the stillness of her bedroom. "Fool--fool--fool!" she said. "Why couldn't I have said 'No' quietly? Why did I let him see I was angry? Why should I be angry? It's better to be wanted because you're a good manager than not to be wanted at all. At least, I suppose it is. No--it _isn't_! it isn't! it isn't! And nothing's any use now. It's all gone. If he'd wanted to marry me when I was young and pretty I could have made him love me. And I _was_ pretty--I know I was--I can remember it perfectly well!"