"Does she know anything of this?"
"Of my visit to you? Nothing."
"Of your intentions;—of your suit generally? Am I to understand that this has any sanction from her?"
"None at all."
"Have you told her anything of it?"
"Not a word. I come to ask you for your permission to address her."
"You mean that she has no knowledge whatever of your—your preference for her."
"I cannot say that. It is hardly possible that I should have learned to love her as I do without some consciousness on her part that it is so."
"What I mean is, without any beating about the bush,—have you been making love to her?"
"Who is to say in what making love consists, Mr. Wharton?"