"But," she said, sweet and stately, "I should always want to belong to myself."
Then he understood. He said quickly, "Of course I'd always want that for you, too. But—oh, look here! Would the other stop that? As I see it, it might help it."
The puzzled wonder grew in her look. All this was strange to her; she had read of it, heard of it. All this was unexpectedly different from books, from college, from life until now. The old was so unexplored to the new, embodied in its modern Diana. At twenty she had seen half the capitals of two hemispheres, yet she was in his eyes more backward in some ways than a girl who had never left her native village.
Mrs. Cartwright could have told her that it is by "belonging" that a woman forms her individuality, and that it is only by giving that she can either gain or keep what she has.
He went on softly talking. Presently he said, "I know now what people mean by being made for each other. You were, for me. Yes, but I was for you. Oh, yes. Oh, yes!... You can't tell me you honestly don't think so.... You don't want to send me away; you don't want not to see me again."
"Oh, no," she agreed, quickly, looking away from him as if to face a situation. She was of the type that faces, losing no time in wondering what she ought to think. And this was the very first time she had ever wondered what she thought.
She did like him. How it had grown, that first "fascination," born from a look! But——At last she seemed to find the words that summed it up.
"This is a big thing," she said, gravely. "It might be the biggest thing that's happened to me; but, Bird-boy, there's no hurry about it."
"No hurry?" He seemed to think that "hurry" was now the main point.
She shook her head. "We don't have to settle anything about it, right here and right now. Now do we?"