He smiled and looked at her curiously.
“But I’m tired of riding through life on a loose snaffle. I want to settle down and have a place of my own and—and all that.”
“I hadn’t an idea. Is that what you wanted to tell me? Who is it, Nina?”
“I’m not in love, you know, Phil,” she went on. “I’ve watched the married couples in our set—those who made love matches—or thought they did, those who married for money or convenience, and those who—well—who just married. There’s not a great deal of difference in the result. One kind of marriage is just about as successful or as unsuccessful as another. It’s time I married and I’ve tried to think the thing out in my own way. I’ve about decided that the successful marriage is entirely a matter of good management—a thing to be carefully planned from the very beginning.”
Gallatin listened with dull ears. The girl beside him was talking heresies. Happiness wasn’t to be built on such a scientific formula. Love was born in Arcadia. He knew. And Jane——
“You know, Phil,” he heard Nina Jaffray saying again, “I’m in the habit of speaking plainly, you may not like my frankness, but you can be pretty sure that I mean what I say. I’ve made up my mind to marry and I wanted you to know about it so that you could think it over.”
“Me! Nina!” Gallatin started forward suddenly aware of the personal note in her remarks. “You don’t mean that I——”
“I thought that you might like to marry me,” she repeated coolly.
“You can’t mean it,” he gasped. “That you—that I——”
“I mean nothing else. I’d like to marry you, Phil.”