"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most shockingly," Marcia declared. "Do you really mean that you are willing to share the profits of my next novel with me?" "I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike. I am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you." "Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily. "Solemn earnest," he insisted. "Will you marry me, Marcia?" She looked across at him. Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous. "James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to. I'm not quite sure--I believe I would. But just tell me--how can I?" "He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said gruffly. She sighed. "When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down at Mandeleys kissed me. If I had been one year younger," she went on, "I should have spat at him. As it was, I never spoke to him again. Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where I was teaching made an awkward attempt at the same thing. He missed me, but his lips just touched my cheek. Then Reginald came. Let me see, that was nineteen years ago, and since then no one else has kissed me." "A record of fidelity," Borden observed, "at which, even in your own stories, you would scoff." "But then, you see," she reminded him, "I never write about a person with queer ideas like mine, because they wouldn't be interesting. People like a little more resilience about their heroines." "Couldn't we talk brutal common sense for once?" he asked impatiently. "I have never abused your Marquis. From your own showing, he has played the game, as you have. All I want to say is that the natural time has come for your separation. I have waited for you a good many years, and I am a domestic man. I want a home--and children. It's quite time you wanted the same." Perhaps for a moment the light in her eyes was a shade softer. She moved uneasily in her place. "Quite primitive, aren't you, James?" she murmured. "Life's a primitive thing when we get down to the bone," he answered. "You and I have wasted many an hour discussing the ologies, trying to thrust ourselves into the peculiar point of view of these neurotic Norwegians or mad Russians. When you come down to bedrock, though, for sober, decent people there is only one outlet to passion, only one elementary satisfaction for man and woman." "You make things sound very simple." "It isn't that," he persisted. "It's you who make them complex by being maudlin about this man. He has had what many would call the best part of your life. He has given up nothing for your sake, done nothing for your sake. He has kept you in the same seclusion that his grandfather would have done. He has treated you, so far as regards the outside world, as a man does--" He stopped abruptly. Something in her eyes warned him.