“I wish you wouldn’t,” I said, sharply, after we had gone in the cool, dim corridor, “I don’t want to have to think about it yet.”
“Sorry,” she said. And I said I was sorry I had been cross. Then the Pension door opened again, and Leslie, followed by a tall, bronzed man, came in. I liked his looks, and I was reassured for him, after I met him, for he had something of Leslie’s manner—an almost lordly, commanding, I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it-and-I-intend-to-get-it air. I think a good many people who have had too much money and have been able to issue too many orders get that. But if Leslie was going to marry him—and I found soon she was—I knew he would need it.
He stayed for dinner and was very charming to every one, but most charming to Leslie and after he left, Leslie came to my room to talk.
“Well?” she questioned from the doorway.
“I like him,” I answered, as she came toward me.
“I love him,” she said, and she said it as sensibly and openly as I had ever heard her say anything, “and,” she continued, “he is going to let me marry him.”
I laughed, and she joined me.
“It isn’t a joke,” she stated after a moment.
“I know it,” I answered.
“He said he had been worried ever since that New York visit, over hurting me,” she went on, “and that, when I dismissed him, he realized he had been stupid in not knowing before that I had grown up. And he said, when he realized I was grown up, that he suddenly began to care for me in a different way. And you know how I feel—”