Now there came a silence—with it seemed to come the moment. Robert spoke—
"Dorothea," he said, and her mind pricked its ears suspiciously because he had not called her Dolly.
"Well?"
"I wonder if you understand what these days have been to me? I was so tired of the world and its follies—this is like some calm haven after a stormy sea."
The words seemed strangely familiar. He had a grating sense of talking like a book, and something within him sneered at the scruple, and said that Dolly would not notice it.
But she said: "I'm sure I've read something like that in a school reading book, but it's very touching, of course."
"Oh—if you're going to mock my holiest sentiments," he said lightly—and withdrew from the attack.
The moment seemed to flutter near again when she said good night to him in the porch where the violet clematis swung against his head as he stood. This time his opening was better inspired.
"Dolly, dear," he said, "how am I ever to go away?"
Her heart leaped against her side, for his tone was tender. But so may a cousin's tone be—even a second cousin's, and when one is thirty-five she has little to fear from the pitying tenderness of her relations.