‘I live very quietly,’ was his reply, ’thinking of grave problems most of my time.  You know I am a great deal alone.’

‘Naturally.’

‘No; anything but naturally.’

Rhoda said nothing.  He waited a moment, then moved to a seat much nearer hers.  Her face hardened, and he saw her fingers lock together.

’Where a man is in love, solitude seems to him the most unnatural of conditions.’

‘Please don’t make me your confidante, Mr. Barfoot,’ Rhoda with well-assumed pleasantry.  ‘I have no taste for that kind of thing.’

‘But I can’t help doing so.  It is you that I am in love with.’

’I am very sorry to hear it.  Happily, the sentiment will not long trouble you.’

He read in her eyes and on her lips a profound agitation.  She glanced about the room, and, before he could again speak, had risen to ring the bell.

‘You always take coffee, I think?’

Without troubling to give any assent, he moved apart and turned over some books on the table.  For full five minutes there was silence.  The coffee was brought; he tasted it and put his cup down.  Seeing that Rhoda had, as it were, entrenched herself behind the beverage, and would continue to sip at is as long as might be necessary, he went and stood in front of her.

’Miss Nunn, I am more serious than you will give me credit for being.  The sentiment, as you call it, has troubled me for some time, and will last.’

Her refuge failed her.  The cup she was holding began to shake a little.

‘Please let me put it aside for you.’

Rhoda allowed him to do so, and then locked her fingers.

’I am so much in love with you that I can’t keep away from this house more than a few days at a time.  Of course you have known it; I haven’t tried to disguise why I came here so often.  It’s so seldom that I see you alone; and now that fortune is kind to me I must speak as best I can.  I won’t make myself ridiculous in your eyes—­ if I can help it.  You despise the love-making of ballrooms and garden parties; so do I, most heartily.  Let me speak like a man who has few illusions to overcome.  I want you for the companion of my life; I don’t see very well how I am to do without you.  You know, I think, that I have only a moderate competence; it’s enough to live upon without miseries, that’s all one can say.  Probably I shall never be richer, for I can’t promise to exert myself to earn money; I wish to live for other things.  You can picture the kind of life I want you to share.  You know me well enough to understand that my wife—­if we use the old word—­would be as free to live in her own way as I to live in mine.  All the same, it is love that I am asking for.  Think how you may about man and woman, you know that there is such a thing as love between them, and that the love of a man and a woman who can think intelligently may be the best thing life has to offer them.’