"Not?" she repeated, glancing up at him in swift surprise.
"Not until—you bid me."
"I?"
"You!"
"But I—I understood that you—intend to—settle down?"
"Certainly!" nodded Bellew, transferring his pipe to another pocket altogether, lest it should damage the rose's tender petals. "To settle down has lately become the—er—ambition of my life."
"Then pray," said Anthea, taking up a sheet of music, and beginning to study it with attentive eyes, "be so good as to tell me—what you mean."
"That necessarily brings us back to the moon again," answered Bellew.
"The moon?"
"The moon!"