"I am so glad you have liked being here," she said sedately. "You must come again some time."
"I don't want to go away at all," he said. "Dolly, won't you let me stay—won't you marry me?"
Almost as he took her hand she snatched it from him.
"You must be mad!" she said. "Why on earth should you want to marry me?" Also she said: "I am old and plain, and you don't love me." But she said it to herself.
"I do want it," he said, "and I want it more than I want anything."
His tone was convincing.
"But why? but why?"
An impulse of truth-telling came to Robert.
"Because it's all so beautiful," he said with straightforward enthusiasm. "All your lovely quiet life—and the house, and these old gardens, and the dainty, delicate, firm way you have of managing everything—the whole thing's my ideal. It's perfect—I can't bear any other life."