"The most dreadful thing you could do," says he, "would be to marry a man who did not love you."
"Eh?" says she.
She seems surprised.
"To marry a man, then, with whom you weren't in love!"
"Oh, that, that's nothing," says she grandly. "I'd do a great deal more than that to get away from my uncle. But"—sorrowfully— "nobody's asked me."
She says it so innocently, so sweetly, that Rylton's heart grows cold within him. To ask her! To tempt this child——
"But," says he, looking away from her religiously, "would you marry a man who was not in love with you?"
"Not in love with me?"
"No. Not actually in love, but who admired—liked you?"
"But a man who wasn't in love with me wouldn't want to marry me," says Tita. "At least, that's what the novels say."