“You like me?”
“Yes. And I am grateful to you....”
Manning tapped with his racket on the turf through some moments of silence. “You are the most perfect, the most glorious of created things—tender, frank intellectual, brave, beautiful. I am your servitor. I am ready to wait for you, to wait your pleasure, to give all my life to winning it. Let me only wear your livery. Give me but leave to try. You want to think for a time, to be free for a time. That is so like you, Diana—Pallas Athene! (Pallas Athene is better.) You are all the slender goddesses. I understand. Let me engage myself. That is all I ask.”
She looked at him; his face, downcast and in profile, was handsome and strong. Her gratitude swelled within her.
“You are too good for me,” she said in a low voice.
“Then you—you will?”
A long pause.
“It isn’t fair....”
“But will you?”
“YES.”