“And aren’t you going to prefer me to everybody and everything? I don’t wish to seem to be making love to you, Miss Lauderdale—not just yet. You must admit that I have been very slow and steady.”
“Slow and steady—you?”
“But it would help to get that settled now. Aren’t you going to prefer me, Jane?”
“I am. That is, I do now—did in fact from that first night when I picked you out of a grand-tier of faces as the one man who——”
“Wait a minute! You say you selected me?”
He took her by both shoulders; held her away from him; peered, startled, into her eyes.
“Of course. But it was more instinct than reason that made me——”
“Well, if you selected me—” and he replaced that head of hers, veiled in soft, fragrant black, against the spot preferred to the wall—“I’m helpless.”
“But not hopeless, I hope?”
“Hopeless, when I’ve kissed you once and have hopes that—? Say, I want to be slow and steady, to give you time to realize without being told that you’re going to marry me. But if you self-selected me, Jane Lauderdale, maybe you’ll notify me as to the soonest possible moment when I’m due to kiss you again.”