"He got quite pink. 'Thank you,' he said. 'But for all that, I am too rough a suitor for such a polished little aristocrat as yourself.' (Rather cheek, that! After all, Dilly, we're five feet seven.) 'We live in an artificial sort of world; and a man, in order not to jar on those around him, requires certain social accomplishments. I have few--at present. You have taught me a great deal, but I should still rather discredit you as a husband. My want of polish would 'affront' you, as we say in Scotland. I am a better beater than shot; I can break a horse better than I can ride it; and I dance a reel better than I waltz. I have strength, but no grace; ability, but no distinction. Of course, if you and I really loved each other--you being of Type Two--none of these things would matter. But for all that, it would hurt you to see people smiling at your husband's little _gaucheries_, wouldn't it?' "I didn't answer, and he got up and went and leaned against the mantelpiece. "'Listen,' he said, 'and I will tell you what I have decided to do. I have made up my mind not to have a try for you--badly though I want it--till I consider that I have reached your standard. I fixed that standard myself, so it is a very, very high one, I have been schooling myself and shaping myself to attain it ever since I met you. But I have not quite reached it yet, and therefore I have nothing to ask of you now.'" "Then what on earth have you brought me here for?" inquired Dolly, feeling vaguely aggrieved. Robin surveyed her rather wistfully, and then smiled in a disarming fashion. "That was weakness," he said, "sheer weakness. But I think it was pardonable. I saw, now that your sister was married, that the days of your old irresponsible flirtations were over, and that you would henceforth regard proposals of marriage as much more serious things than hitherto. Consequently you might marry any day, without ever knowing that a little later on you would have received an offer from me. I have brought you here, then, to tell you that I am a prospective candidate, but that I do not feel qualified to put down my name at present. Ideally speaking, I ought to have kept silence until the moment when I considered that I was ready for you; but--well, there are limits to self-repression, and I have allowed myself this one little outbreak. All I ask, then, is that in considering other offers you will bear somewhere in the back of your mind the remembrance that you will, if you desire it, one day have the refusal of me. I admit that the possibility of your being influenced by the recollection is very remote, but I am going to leave nothing undone that _can_ be done to get you."