"It's going to come true," declared Chalfont.
She held him away from her.
"Don't tempt me. It's not the title. That's only—funny. Me, my lady! What tempts me is the thought of being with you in that place where my heart is."
"My home?"
She nodded, appeared to be considering.
"There is this," she said. "If I married you I would do my best to try and be a lady—not vulgar. I think, after a little, it would come easy.... You said we should be perfect friends; but suppose—suppose I couldn't help loving you?"
"I was asking myself if that would come about—hoping it. In my case it is an eventuality not very remote."
His very quietness impressed her. She knew he was not demonstrative, yet behind every word he spoke the intensity of his feelings was manifest to her. She had to fight hard to keep in check the ferment of emotion he had stirred in her. She picked up her hat from the chair where she had been sitting on it.
"It might have been more crushed," she said quaintly, but with a meaning that had a hint of tragedy averted in it. She went to a mirror and began arranging her tumbled hair. "I must go back to Lexie. I stole out while she was asleep. Perhaps I shall get there before she wakes up."
"I'll take you," he said. "Only—aren't you going to give me an answer first, Maggy?"