"You mean marry you?"
"Yes." He did his best to hide his eagerness.
She shook her head, and put her hand lightly on his arm, "My dear man, I can't. It isn't fair to you. I think it's, well, immense of you to have thought of it but I draw the line at divorce. If you had to go through all that horrid business I'm perfectly certain it would be on my conscience all my life."
Franklin saw his chance to put up a bloodless fight. "But why should there be a divorce?"
"I don't follow you," said Beatrix.
"Let's be married for the sake of everybody concerned and remain married."
Beatrix looked at him squarely and bravely. "I'll tell you why not," she said, after a pause. "Deep down somewhere in me there's a little unspoiled fund of romance and sentiment. I'm looking rather wistfully forward to marriage as the turning point in my funny life. I want it to be the best thing that I shall ever do. I want it to be for love."
"And you don't think that you could ever love me?" asked Franklin, trying to keep his voice steady.
"No," she said, simply, "I don't. And what's more, I'm not your sort of girl, I know that perfectly well."
"Speak, you fool, speak!" cried Franklin inwardly. "Get off your stilts and lay yourself at her feet and give up this crazy idea of breaking her splendid spirit and blurt out that you love her to desperation and would gladly go to the devil for her."