"I'll not tell you a thing." But he took the chair and lit a cigarette. "I'm more in love with you than ever, if you want to know. When will you marry me?"
"Shall we say two months from today?"
"Two months! Why not tomorrow?"
"Oh, hardly. In the first place I'd like it all to be quite perfect, and I'd dreamed of spending our honeymoon in the Dolomites. I've a shooting box there on the shore of a wonderful lake. I used to stay there quite alone after my guests had left.… And then—well, it would hardly be fair to give New York two shocks in succession. They all take for granted I'll marry some one—I am already engaged to Mr. Osborne, although I have heard you alluded to meaningly—but better let them talk the first sensation to rags.… They will be angry enough with me for marrying a young man, but perhaps too relieved that I have not carried off one of their own sons.… Polly is in agonies at the present moment … we'll have to live in New York more or less—I suppose?"
"More or less? Altogether. My work is here."
"I believe there is more work for both of us in Europe."
"And do you imagine I'd live on your money? I've nothing but what I make."
"I could pull wires and get you into one of the embassies——"
"I'm no diplomat, and don't want to be. Rotten lazy job."
"Couldn't you be foreign correspondent for your newspaper?"