Mr. Crewe laughed again.  Nevertheless, he was a little puzzled over this remark.

“I am not sentimental,” he began.

“You certainly are not,” she said.

“You have a way,” he replied, with a shade of reproof in his voice, “you have a way at times of treating serious things with a little less gravity than they deserve.  I am still a young man, but I have seen a good deal of life, and I know myself pretty well.  It is necessary to treat matrimony from a practical as well as a sentimental point of view.  There wouldn’t be half the unhappiness and divorces if people took time to do this, instead of rushing off and getting married immediately.  And of course it is especially important for a man in my position to study every aspect of the problem before he takes a step.”

By this time a deep and absorbing interest in a new aspect of Mr. Crewe’s character had taken possession of Victoria.

“And you believe that, by taking thought, you can get the kind of a wife you want?” she asked.

“Certainly,” he replied; “does that strike you as strange?”

“A little,” said Victoria.  “Suppose,” she added gently, “suppose that the kind of wife you’d want wouldn’t want you?”

Mr. Crewe laughed again.

“That is a contingency which a strong man does not take into consideration,” he answered.  “Strong men get what they want.  But upon my word, Victoria, you have a delicious way of putting things.  In your presence I quite forget the problems and perplexities which beset me.  That,” he said, with delicate meaning, “that is another quality I should desire in a woman.”

“It is one, fortunately, that isn’t marketable,” she said, “and it’s the only quality you’ve mentioned that’s worth anything.”

“A woman’s valuation,” said Mr. Crewe.

“If it made you forget your own affairs, it would be priceless.”

“Look here, Victoria,” cried Mr. Crewe, uncrossing his knees, “joking’s all very well, but I haven’t time for it to-day.  And I’m in a serious mood.  I’ve told you what I want, and now that I’ve got to go in a few minutes, I’ll come to the point.  I don’t suppose a man could pay a woman a higher compliment than to say that his proposal was the result of some years of thought and study.”

Here Victoria laughed outright, but grew serious again at once.

“Unless he proposed to her the day he met her.  That would be a real compliment.”

“The man,” said Mr. Crewe, impatiently, “would be a fool.”

“Or else a person of extreme discernment,” said Victoria.  “And love is lenient with fools.  By the way, Humphrey, it has just occurred to me that there’s one quality which some people think necessary in a wife, which you didn’t mention.”

“What’s that?”

“Love,” said Victoria.

“Love, of course,” he agreed; “I took that for granted.”

“I supposed you did,” said Victoria, meekly.