"Then I shall wait until you are ready. But we do not need to continue this conversation."
The professor sighed. "This," he said, "is what comes of taking a woman at her word."
"What?"
"I might have known," he went on guilefully, "that you didn't really mean it. No young girl would."
"Mean what?"
"That you had no room in your scheme of things for ordinary marriage. Of course you were talking nonsense. I beg your pardon."
"Will you kindly explain what you mean!"
"I will if you will sit down so that I may talk to you on my own level. You see, your determination not to marry struck me very much at the time because it voiced my own—er—determination also. I said to myself, 'Here are two people sufficiently original to wish to escape the common lot.' I thought about it a great deal. And then an idea came. It was, I admit, the inspiration of a moment. But it grew. It certainly grew."
Desire sat down again and folded her hands over her knees.
"I will listen."