After the first awkwardness of such a rencounter had worn off Dorothy found Wilfred entertaining. It was astonishing to learn how accurately the failings and follies of so many of her friends and acquaintances were known to the editor, who had never met one of them. At first he pretended that he had met them; but as gradually he saw more of the countess he gave up this pretense, and finally he revealed the existence in his mind of a perpetual and abominable dread that soon or late in one of his cheery paragraphs he should make a mistake, not, of course, a mistake of fact or even an unjust imputation--that would be nothing--but a mistake of form. He was really haunted day and night by such bogies as referring to a maid of honor after marriage without her prefix, though to have suggested that her behavior with somebody else's husband was less honorable than that would no more have troubled him than to state positively that her main hobby was breeding Sealyham terriers, when it was really communicating every Sunday at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. If in Lonsdale Road Dorothy beheld her present self, in Wilfred Curlew she saw the reflection of what she was twelve years ago, enough of which old self still existed to make her feel proud that never in her most anxious moments had she revealed to another person her own dread of making a mistake. One day after a long talk about well-known people in society, Curlew exclaimed from the depths of his inmost being, "If only I had you always!" "Is this a proposal?" she laughed. He rose and walked about the room in his agitated fashion; then supporting with one arm the small of his back as he used, and wrenching his voice back into his throat whence in his emotion it had nearly escaped, he paused to mutter: "Presumptuous, I know, but sincere." This phrase remained in Dorothy's mind for long afterward, and in her gloomiest hours she could always smile when she repeated gently to herself, "Presumptuous, I know, but sincere." Naturally, she told Curlew as kindly as she could that his proposal was far outside the remotest bounds of possibility. "Besides," she added, "you'd really be much better off without my help. Readers of your paper will always greatly prefer your view of society to my view. My view would pull your circulation down to nothing in less than no time." "It's true," Curlew groaned. "How wise you are!" Only that morning he had received a sharp reminder from the great brain of which _The Way of the World_ was merely an inquisitive and insignificant tentacle, to say that the last three or four numbers of the paper had shown a marked falling off in their ability to provide what the public required. "You have to admit that I am right," Dorothy pointed out kindly. "Yes, but if you'd marry me, in a year or two I would give up journalism and write novels. I've got a theory about the form of the English novel which I should like to put into practice."