“It certainly doesn’t seem to be unusually rapid,” he agreed.
Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes without their glasses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was touched by his kindness.
“If you think I ought to go to school,” she offered, “I will go to school.”
He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her answer about school.
“I won’t promise to marry you,” she said. “Because I like to keep promises and I can’t say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I’m changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don’t forget that.”
He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet.
“Have you told your sister about me?” Sylvia asked.
“Not yet,” he confessed. “I think I won’t tell anybody about you except the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you.”
Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but that he had always been afraid at the last moment.
“Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?” Sylvia said.