"I care for you, dreadfully," said I. "Why, this isn't friendship, is it? It's being in love."
"I should think it was--with me," he said. "It's all of me, heart, soul and body, drowning in love."
"Don't drown," I whispered to him. "I--can't spare you."
After that we didn't say a word, but I hadn't supposed it was possible for any human creature to feel so seraphically happy as I did. I don't know how long a time passed before we even spoke, but it seemed only a minute--a minute stolen straight out of heaven. And he was so handsome and dear that I would have kept that minute forever if I could, for it was impossible to believe that another could be so perfect.
But by and by it did merge into sister minutes, just as good, and we began to talk and tell each other things.
He told me again how he'd loved me from the very first instant, and I told him that after the day on the dock, if not before, I'd never quite had him out of my thoughts for a moment.
"There has always been a sort of undertone of you," I went on, "no matter what else I was thinking of, just as Sally says, when you are near the sea you hear it through every other sound."
He liked having me say that, and his eyes are too glorious when he likes things that I say.
"I loved you so much," he answered, "that I felt my love must have some power over your heart; it couldn't go for nothing. I knew I wasn't worthy of you, but the love was, for no man in your own world could offer you a greater one. That's my justification for asking you to put your hand in mine. But am I asking too much? Are you sure you won't regret anything you may have to give up?"
"There's nothing I wouldn't give up to be with you always," I assured him. "But I don't see that I shall have to give up much that I really care for. We shall be poor, of course, but I shan't mind that a bit--with you. We can live in a sweet little cottage somewhere, can't we? Or if you have to be in a town, we shall have a wee, wee flat, and it will be such fun looking after it, just like having a doll's house, only a hundred times better. I've never been rich, you know; it's always been rather a struggle, and ever so many of my dresses have been made out of Mother's or Victoria's. I shall learn to cook and sew."