"Poor David!" she said, making much of his hand as if she had hurt it. But David Gemmell's was too simple a face to oppose to her pitying eyes, and presently she let his hand slip from her and stood regarding him curiously. He had to look another way, and then she even smiled, a little forlornly.
"Do you mind talking it over with me, Grizel?" he asked. "I have always been well aware that you did not care for me in that way, but nevertheless I believe you might do worse."
"No woman could do better," she answered gravely. "I should like you to talk it over, David, if you begin at the beginning"; and she sat down with her hands crossed.
"I won't say what a good thing it would be for me," was his beginning; "we may take that for granted."
"I don't think we can," she remarked; "but it scarcely matters at present. That is not the beginning, David."
He was very anxious to make it the beginning.
"I am weary of living in lodgings," he said. "The practice suffers by my not being married. Many patients dislike being attended by a single man. I ought to be in McQueen's house; it has been so long known as the doctor's house. And you should be a doctor's wife—you who could almost be the doctor. It would be a shame, Grizel, if you who are so much to patients were to marry out of the profession. Don't you follow me?"
"I follow you," she replied; "but what does it matter? You have not begun at the beginning." He looked at her inquiringly. "You must begin," she informed him, "by saying why you ask me to marry you when you don't love me." She added, in answer to another look from him: "You know you don't." There was a little reproach in it. "Oh, David, what made you think I could be so easily taken in!"
He looked so miserable that by and by she smiled, not so tremulously as before.
"How bad at it you are, David!" she said.