'Well?' he ventured. 'Didn't you know?'
'I thought—I thought,' she murmured stupidly, 'I thought you liked me.'
'I can't tell you how I admire you. I'm not going to praise you to your face, but I simply never met anyone like you. From the very first moment I saw you, it was the same. It's something in your face, Anna—— Anna, will you be my wife?'
The actual question was put in a precise, polite, somewhat conventional tone. To Anna he was never more himself than at that moment.
She could not speak; she could not analyse her feelings; she could not even think. She was adrift. At last she stammered: 'We've only known each other——'
'Oh, dear,' he exclaimed masterfully, 'what does that matter? If it had been a dozen years instead of one, that would have made no difference.' She drew her hand timidly away, but he took it again. She felt that he dominated her and would decide for her. 'Say yes.'
'Yes,' she said.
She saw pictures of her career as his wife, and resolved that one of the first acts of her freedom should be to release Agnes from the more ignominious of her father's tyrannies.
They walked home almost in silence. She was engaged, then. Yet she experienced no new sensation. She felt as she had felt on the way down, except that she was sorely perturbed. There was no ineffable rapture, no ecstatic bliss. Suddenly the prospect of happiness swept over her like a flood.
At the gate she wished to make a request to him, but hesitated, because she could not bring herself to use his Christian name. It was proper for her to use his Christian name, however, and she would do so, or perish.