That operation completed, he turned and looked round the little room. There was an arm-chair in the corner, but he came and sat down on the sofa beside Dolly. Dolly gazed at him dumbly.
"He looked so utterly grim and determined" [says the letter], "that my heart began to bump in a perfectly fatuous way. I felt like a woman who is going to be murdered in a railway tunnel.
"He sat down, and one of his huge hands was suddenly stretched towards me, and I thought at first he was trying to grab one of mine. I did my best to edge away along the sofa, but I was up against the end already.
"Then his hand opened, and something dropped into my lap. It was the key of the door.
"'I have locked it,' he said, 'not with any intention of keeping you in, but in the hope of keeping other people out. You are perfectly free to get up and go whenever you please, if you don't wish to listen to what I have to say.'
"Well, dear, I suppose I ought to have risen to my full height, and, with a few superb gestures of haughty contempt, have swept majestically from the room. But—I didn't! I saw I was in for another proposal, and as the man couldn't eat me I decided to let him do his worst.
"It was a weird proposal, though." [Spelt 'wierd.'] "It wasn't exactly what he said, because one is never surprised at anything a man may say when he is proposing; but the way he said it. All men say pretty much the same thing in the end, but most of them are so horribly nervous that they simply don't know what they're talking about for the first five minutes or so. (Do you remember poor little Algy Brock? He was nearly crying all the time. At least he was with me, and I suppose he was with you too.) But Robin might have been having a chat with his solicitor the way he behaved. I'll tell you ..."
Robin apparently began by telling Dolly, quite simply and plainly, that he loved her. Then he gave a brief outline of the history of his affection. It had begun at the very beginning of things, he said, almost as soon as he discovered that he could distinguish Dolly from Dilly without the aid of the brown spot. "And that was after I had been in the house just three days," he added.
For some time, it appeared, he had been content to be pleasantly in love. He enjoyed Dolly's society when it came his way, but with native caution he had taken care to avoid seeking too much of it in case he should gradually find himself unable to do without it.
"I saw from the first," he said, "that you were entirely unconscious of my feelings towards you; and I would not have had it otherwise. If I was to succeed at all it must be as an acquired taste; and acquired tastes, as you know, are best formed unconsciously."
Dolly nodded to show her detached appreciation of the soundness of this point.
"I permitted myself one indulgence," Robin continued. "I dedicated a book to you."
"O-oh!" said Dolly, genuinely interested. "Was that me? Dilly and I thought it must be a girl in Scotland."
Then she realised that this was a step down from her pedestal of aloofness, and was silent again. Robin went on—
"Yes, it was you. It was a sentimental thing to do, but it afforded me immense pleasure. Love lives more on the homage it pays than that which it receives. Have you noticed that?"