Her quiet years had taken from her no least little touch of girlish sentiment. The longing to be loved was as keen in her as it had been at twenty. She cried herself to sleep, and had a headache the next day. Also her eyes looked smaller than usual and her nose was pink. She went and sat in the black shade of a yew, and trusted that in that deep shadow her eyes and nose would not make Robert feel glad that she had said "No." She wished him to be sorry. She had put on the prettiest gown she had, in the hope that he _would_ be sorry; then she was ashamed of the impulse; also its pale clear greenness seemed to intensify the pinkness of her nose. So she went back to the trailing grey gown. Her wearing of her best Honiton lace collar seemed pardonable. He would never notice it--or know that real lace is more becoming than anything else. She waited for him in the deep shadow, and it was all the morning that she waited. For he knew the value of suspense, and he had not the generosity that disdains the use of the obvious weapon. He was right so far, that before he came she had had time to wonder whether it was her life's one chance of happiness that she had thrown away. But he drove the knife home too far, for when at last she heard the click of the gate and saw the gleam of flannels through the shrubbery, the anxious questioning, "Will he come?" "Have I offended him beyond recall?" changed at one heart-beat to an almost perfect understanding of his reasons for delay. She greeted him coldly. That he expected. But he saw--or believed he saw--the relief under the coldness--and he brought up his forces for the attack. "Dear," he said--almost at once--"forgive me for last night. It was true, and if I had expressed it better you'd have understood. It isn't just the house and garden, and the perfect life. It's _you_! Don't you understand what it is to come back from the world to all this, and you--you--you--the very centre of the star?" "It's all very well," she said, "but that wasn't what you said last night." "It's what I meant," said he. "Dear, don't you see how much I want you?" "But--I'm old--and plain, and--" She looked at him with eyes still heavy from last night's tears, and he experienced an unexpected impulse of genuine tenderness. "My dear," he said, "when I first remember your mother she was about your age. I used to think she was the most beautiful person in the world. She seemed to shed happiness and peace around her--like--like a lamp sheds light. And you are just like her. Ah--don't send me away." "Thank you," she said, struggling wildly with the cross currents of emotion set up by his words. "Thank you. I have not lived single all these years to be married at last because I happen to be like my mother." The words seemed a treason to the dead, and the tears filled Dorothea's eyes. He saw them; he perceived that they ran in worn channels, and the impulse of tenderness grew.