“I shall always remain selfish, you mean,” said he. “Self-centred; whatever you like to call it.”
She frowned over this.
“What I suppose I really mean is that I don’t understand you,” she said. And, getting up, she fumbled for the switch of the light by the door. “Let’s throw some light on you.”
He got up, too.
“I must go to bed,” he said. “It’s any hour of the night.”
She stood in front of him, stretching her arms, which were a little cramped with leaning on the window-sill, and looked at him gravely.
“You’re going to ask Silvia to marry you, then?” she said.
“I am, as soon as I think she will accept me.”
Nellie received this point-blank. She had fully expected it, and now, when it came, there was nothing in her that ever so faintly winced. Then she took two steps forward, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
“Peter, darling, what good friends we’ve been,” she said, “and we’ll carry all that forward into the future. There’s no one like you. That’s just what I meant by kissing you, that, and to wish you all good luck. Perhaps your son will marry my daughter; wouldn’t that be nice; and then we can envy them both, and be wildly jealous. As for asking Silvia—well, what about to-morrow? Perhaps it’s rather late to ask her to-night.”