She was not clear-sighted here, for love, if it be love at all, must bring the rosy veil with it and dim the seeing of the brightest eyes.  While the fact that she had grown up with Raymond made her view clear enough in some directions, in others it served, of course, to dim judgment.  She credited him with greater intellect than he possessed, and dreamed that higher achievements were in his power than was the truth.  But there existed a mean, below her dream yet above his present ambition, that it was certainly possible with her incentive he might attain.  She might make him more sympathetic and so more synthetic also, and show him how his own industry embraced industrial problems at large—­how it could not be taken by itself, but must hold its place only by favour of its progress, and command respect only as it represented the worthiest relation between capital and labour.  Thus, from the personal interest of his work, she would lift him to measure the world-wide needs of all workers.  And then, in time to come, he would forget the personal before the more splendid demands of the universal.  The trend of machinery was towards tyranny; he must never lose sight of that, or let the material threaten the spiritual.  Private life, as well as public life, was open to the tyranny of the machine; and there, too, it would be her joyful privilege to fight beside him for added beauty, added liberty, not only in their own home, but all homes wherein they had power to increase comfort and therefore happiness.  The sensitiveness of women should be linked to the driving force of men, as the safety valve to the engine.  Thus, in a simile surely destined to delight him, she summed her intentions and desires.

She had often wondered what must be essential to the fullest employment of her energies and the best and purest use of her thinking; and now she saw that marriage answered the question—­not marriage in the abstract, but just marriage with this man.  He, of all she had known, was the one with whom she felt best endowed to mingle and merge, so that their united forces should be poured to help the world and water with increase the modest territory through which they must flow.

She turned to go to sleep at last, yet dearly longed to tell Raymond and amaze her father with the great tidings.

An impulse prompted her to leave her lover not a moment more in doubt.  She rose, therefore, and descended to his room, which opened beside his private study on the ground floor.  The hour was nearly four on an autumn morning.  She listened, heard him move restlessly and knew that he did not sleep.  He struck a match and lighted a cigarette, for he often smoked at night.

Then she knocked at the door.

“Who the devil’s that?” he shouted.

“I,” she said, opening the door an inch and talking softly.  “Stop where you are and stop worrying and go to sleep.  I’m going to marry you, Ray, and I’m happier than ever I was before in all my life.”