“Mrs. Wayne,” he said, “I must tell you something.”

“You’re going to say, after all, that my sevens are like fours.”

“I’m going to say something worse—­more inexcusable.  I’m going to tell you how much I want you to honor me by becoming my wife.”

She pronounced only one syllable.  She said, “Oh!” as crowds say it when a rocket goes off.

“I suppose you think it ridiculous in a man of my age to speak of love, but it’s not ridiculous, by Heaven!  It’s tragic.  I shouldn’t have presumed, though, to mention the subject to you, only it is intolerable to me to think of your lacking anything when I have so much.  I can’t explain why this knowledge gave me courage.  I know that you care nothing for luxuries and money, less than any one I know; but the fact that you haven’t everything that you ought to have makes me suffer so much that I hope you will at least listen to me.”

“But you know it doesn’t make me suffer a bit,” said Mrs. Wayne.

“To know you at all has been such a happiness that I am shocked at my own presumption in asking for your companionship for the rest of my life, and if in addition to that I could take care of you, share with you—­”

No one ever presented a proposition to Mrs. Wayne without finding her willing to consider it, an open-mindedness that often led her into the consideration of absurdities.  And now the sacred cupidity of the reformer did for an instant leap up within her.  All the distressed persons, all the tottering causes in which she was interested, seemed to parade before her eyes.  Then, too, the childish streak in her character made her remember how amusing it would be to be Adelaide Farron’s mother-in-law, and Peter’s grandmother by marriage.  Nor was she at all indifferent to the flattery of the offer or the touching reserves of her suitor’s nature.

“I should think you would be so lonely!” he said gently.

She nodded.

“I am often.  I miss not having any one to talk to over the little things that”—­she laughed—­“I probably wouldn’t talk over if I had some one.  But even with Pete I am lonely.  I want to be first with some one again.”

“You will always be first with me.”

“Even if I don’t marry you?”

“Whatever you do.”

Like the veriest coquette, she instantly decided to take all and give nothing—­to take his interest, his devotion, his loyalty, all of the first degree, and give him in return a divided interest, a loyalty too much infected by humor to be complete, and a devotion in which several causes and Pete took precedence.  She did not do this in ignorance.  On the contrary, she knew just how it would be; that he would wait and she be late, that he would adjust himself and she remain unchanged, that he would give and give and she would never remember that it would be kind some day to ask.  Yet it did not seem to her an unfair bargain, and perhaps she was right.