Time—­the mere knowledge of unbroken hours ahead—­is a boon which real love cannot do without.  Minor feelings may flourish on snatched interviews and stolen meetings, but love demands—­and usually gets—­protected leisure.  The next day these lovers had it.  They spent the morning, when Mr. Cord was known to be playing golf, at the Cords’ house, and then when Mr. Cord telephoned that he was staying to luncheon at the club, if Crystal did not object (and Crystal did not), she and Ben arranged a picnic—­at least Tomes did, and they went off about one o’clock in the blue car.  They went to a pool in the rocks that Crystal had always known about, with high walls around it, and here, with a curtain of foam between them and the sea, for the waves were rising, they ate lunch, as much alone as on a desert island.

It was here that Ben asked her to marry him, or, to be accurate, it was here that they first began talking about their life together, and whether Nora would become reconciled to another woman about the flat.

The nearest approach to a definite proposal was Ben’s saying: 

“You would not mind my saying something about all this to your father before I go this evening, would you?”

And Crystal replied:  “Poor father!  It will be a blow, I’m afraid.”

“Well,” said Ben, “he told me himself that he liked me better than David.”

“That’s not saying much.”

At this Ben laughed lightly.

He might have had his wrong-headed notions about barriers, but he was not so un-American as to regard a father as an obstacle.

“But, oh, Crystal,” he added, “suppose you find you do hate being poor.  It is a bore in some ways.”

Crystal, who had been tucking away the complicated dishes of her luncheon basket, looked at Ben and lightly sucked one finger to which some raspberry jam from Tomes’s supernal sandwiches had adhered.

“I sha’n’t mind it a bit, Ben,” she said, “and for a good reason—­because I’m terribly conceited.”  He did not understand at all, and she went on:  “I believe I shall be just as much of a person—­perhaps more—­without money.  The women who really mind being poor are the humble-minded ones, who think that they are made by their clothes and their lovely houses and their maids and their sables.  When they lose them they lose all their personality, and of course that terrifies them.  I don’t think I shall lose mine.  Does it shock you to know that I think such a lot of myself?”

It appeared it did not shock him at all.

[Illustration:  “Suppose you find you do hate being poor?”]

When they reached the house she established him in the drawing-room and went off to find her father.

She was a true woman, by which is meant now and always that she preferred to allow a man to digest his dinner before she tried to bring him to a rational opinion.  But in this case her hands were tied.  The Cords dined at eight—­or sometimes a little later, and Ben’s boat left for New York at half past nine, so that it would be utterly impossible to postpone the discussion of her future until after dinner.  It had to be done at once.