"I am not so sure," he replied gravely. "There is such a thing, you are doubtless aware, as love at first sight."
"Not for sensible people, and I think we are sensible," she argued grudgingly. "I know, at any rate, that I was not in love with you for a long time afterwards."
The whole world seemed to spin round with Ned....
"Then you are--oh! my dear, my dear!" ...
"Please don't!" she cried, hastily drawing back from his outstretched hands; "I hate being touched. Besides that has nothing to do with what I want to find out. Why, from the very beginning, did you always understand? That can have nothing to do with love ... not, at least, with love like Gwen's"--the last sentence came thoughtfully in a lower key.
"But our love will be different, dear," he said almost solemnly. "If you will marry me, Aura, I will try to understand to the very end--so help me God."
She smiled at him brilliantly. "And you would--you couldn't help it! But that is no reason why we should marry. It seems to me we have mixed things up somehow. No! that is no reason at all."
"Perhaps not," he admitted, following her thought. "Then marry me for some other reason, my dear."
She shook her head. "There is only one reason for marriage," she said, with a wisdom born of the untrammelled teaching of Nature, "and if I were to marry you--I should be afraid--yes, Ned! I will tell you the truth because you are certain to understand--I should be afraid of loving you too much. I--I don't want to love like that."
He sat bewildered, his passion dying at the hands of truth. Then he muttered, half to himself, feeling with a rush of shame how far he was from her, how little he really understood her innocence of evil, "Heaven knows why you should--I am a miserable beast--but----. Oh! I hope to God you would, my dear--I hope to God you would!"