“Doesn’t this make you think of—­our first long talk together?”

“I often think of it,” Diane said, faintly, trying to assume that they were entering on an ordinary conversation.  “As you didn’t agree with me—­”

“I do now,” he said, quickly.  “I see you were right, in everything.  I want to thank you for what you’ve done for Dorothea—­and for me.  I didn’t dream, a year ago, that the change in both of us could be so great.”

“Dorothea was a sweet little girl, to begin with—­”

“Yes; but I don’t want to talk about that now.  She will express her own sense of gratitude; but in the mean while I want to tell you mine.  You will understand something of its extent when I say that I ask you to be my wife.”

Diane neither spoke nor looked at him.  The only sign she gave of having heard him was a slight bowing of the head, as of one who accepts a decree.  The first few instants’ stillness had the ineffable quality which might spring from the abolition of time when bliss becomes eternity.  There was a space, not to be reckoned by any terrestrial counting, during which each heart was caught up into wonderful spheres of emotion—­on his side the relief of having spoken, on hers the joy of having heard; and though it passed swiftly it was long enough to give to both the vision of a new heaven and a new earth.  It was a vision that never faded again from the inward sight of either, though the mists of mortal error began creeping over it at once.

“If I take you by surprise—­” he began, as he felt the clouds of reality closing round him.

“No,” she broke in, still without looking up at him; “I heard you intended to ask me.”

Though he made a little uneasy movement, he knew that this was precisely what she might have been expected to say.

“I thought you had possibly heard that,” he said, in her own tone of quiet frankness, “and I want to explain to you that what happened was an accident.”

“So I imagined.”

“If I spoke of you as my future wife, I must ask you to believe that it was in the way of neither ill-timed jest nor foolish boast.”

“You needn’t assure me of that, because I could never have thought so.  If I want assurance at all it’s on other points.”

“If I can explain them—­”

“I can almost explain them myself.  What I require is rather in the way of corroboration.  Wasn’t it much as the knight of old threw the mantle of his protection over the shoulders of a distressed damsel?”

“I know what you mean; but I don’t admit the justice of the simile.”

“But if you did admit it, wouldn’t it be something like what actually occurred?”

“You’re putting questions to me,” he said, smiling down at her; “but you haven’t answered mine.”

“I must beg leave to point out,” she smiled, in return, “that you haven’t asked me one.  You’ve only stated a fact—­or what I presume to be a fact.  But before we can discuss it I ought to be possessed of certain information; and you’ve put me in a position where I have a right to demand it.”