There was not a dwelling in sight. The quiet of that old park with its brooding oaks was primeval. Behind her was the pink and blue glory of sky and mountain. Her eyes were like stars.
He burst out boyishly: "If I only had more time! If only I could have met you even when I first came to San Francisco … before … before … I'd—I'd like to marry you. It's fearfully soon to say such a thing. I feel like a fool. But I'm not the first man to fall madly in love at first sight … and you … you … If I tell you now instead of waiting it's because there's so little time. Would you … do you think you could marry me?"
"Oh! Ah!" (She almost said Ow.) After all it was her first proposal. She was thrilled in spite of the fact that she was in love with another man, for she felt close to something elemental, hazily understood … something in her own unsounded depths rushed to meet it.
But he was too young, and too "easy," and she didn't like his gray flannel shirt; which, laundry being out of the question, he had bought in Fillmore Street almost opposite the undertaker's.
"Suppose we correspond for a year? That is, if you must really go so soon."
"I must. I want you to go with me."
His eyes had turned almost black and he had set his jaw in a way she didn't like at all. In nerving himself to go through the ordeal he had worked up his fermenting mind into a positively brutal mood.
"Oh—mercy! I couldn't do that. My people are the most conventional in the world."
The situation was getting beyond her. She had not intended to make him propose for at least a week and then he would have been abject and she majestic. She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that made her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at bay as it were, looked at him with a little frown.
He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less.