“Afraid?”
“Yes.” He spoke uncertainly. “I've had a feeling that if I let you go, you'll meet some man down there, at Monkshaven, who'll want to marry you . . . And I shall lose you! . . . Oh, Sara! I don't ask you to say you love me—yet. Say that you'll marry me . . . I'd teach you the rest—you'd learn to love me.”
But that fierce, unpremeditated kiss—the first lover's kiss that she had known—had endowed her with a sudden clarity of vision.
“No,” she answered steadily. “I don't know much about love, Tim, but I'm very sure it's no use trying to manufacture it to order, and—listen, Tim, dear,” the pain in his face making her suddenly all tenderness again—“if I married you, and afterwards you couldn't teach me as you think you could, we should only be wretched together.”
“I could never be wretched if you were my wife,” he answered doggedly. “I've love enough for two.”
She shook her head.
“No, Tim. Don't let's spoil a good friendship by turning it into a one-sided love-affair.”
He smiled rather grimly.
“I'm afraid it's too late to prevent that,” he said drily. “But I won't worry you any more now, dear. Only—I'm not going to accept your answer as final.”
“I wish you would,” she urged.