“Yes, and of me.”
“Excellent topics both.”
“Yes; but the two of us only make up one topic, and this is it. Now listen. Your mother asked me to call and have tea some afternoon. If she hadn’t asked me I would have asked her permission to do so. I came pretty soon after her invitation, didn’t I?”
“I’m so sorry that she has a Committee meeting this afternoon.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me—that is, in what I have to say to you. And what I have to say to you is this; I came early to see you and I’m coming often—very often—you have no notion how often—I don’t believe I quite know it myself. Now no matter how often I come I want you to understand distinctly from the first that I disclaim all intention of using Plato as an umbrella to sit under with you. I am coming in a strictly anti-Platonic spirit.”
He had grown a bit red and she had flushed all over.
“Go on—go on; tell me all you have to say; it’s quite—quite—funny—yes, funny,” she said, and there was something of bewilderment in her voice. “I never—never—heard anything so—so queer—so straightforward. Go on.”
“I have really said all that I came to say—maybe a trifle more,” he said. “I’m not going to make an ass of myself leading you to fancy that I’m coming here as a casual acquaintance having no designs in my heart against you—I mean, for you. I don’t want you to fancy that I’m coming here to talk to you about books, or pictures, for the sake of exchanging opinions in a strictly platonic way. No, I want you to know from the outset that I’m coming as a possible lover.”
“I understand—oh, quite clearly—you have made the position quite clear to me; only let me tell you at once, Lord Lullworth that—that——”
“Now there you go treating me as disdainfully as if I had actually declared myself to be your lover. I’m nothing of the sort, let me tell you. I’m only the rough material out of which a lover may be formed. I’m a possible lover, so I should be treated very gently—just the way that you would treat a baby feeling that it may one day grow up to be a man. At the same time nothing may really come of the business. Cupid, the god of love is always shown as a child, because the people who started the idea had before them the statistics of infant mortality; so many little Loves die when they are young and never grow up at all.”