"There is another point to which I should like to draw your attention," he said after a slight pause. "Marriage does not necessarily imply any feeling of an intense nature by both parties. I wish to offer you security and companionship. As I told you before, I am a lonely man; I could be content with very little. I have noticed that when you come into a room it makes a difference to me."
"Don't make me cry!" said Stella, suddenly, and then she did cry a little, a nervous flurry of tears that shook her for a brief moment and left her laughing at the consternation in his face.
"You see how silly I am!" she said. "But however silly, I'm not a cheat. You offer me everything. I couldn't take it and not offer you everything back. To me marriage means everything. It isn't only—is it?—a perpetual companionship, though when you think of it, that's tremendous,—almost all the other companionships of life are intermittent, but it's the building up of fresh life out of a single love."
Mr. Travers looked away. He was surprised that Stella had not shocked him. The idea of any woman mentioning the existence of a child until she had a child might have shocked him; but Stella failed to move his sense of propriety. It even struck him that marriage would be less inclined to lapse into the sordid and irregular struggles of his experience if it was based upon so plain a foundation. He looked away because he felt that now he could not change her.
Stella wished that they were in a house. It struck her that a room would give more of the advantages of a retreat to Mr. Travers. She was very anxious to make his retreat easy for him.
"Would you do me a tremendous service?" she asked gently.
He turned quickly to face her.
"That is what I should like to do you," he said. But he looked at her a little suspiciously, for he was not sure that the service Stella asked wouldn't, after all, be only some new way of helping him.
"You said the other day," she said, meeting his eyes with unswerving candor, "that I might have extra help if I wanted it. I do want very much to find some work for my sister, Eurydice. She is very clever; cleverer than I am a great deal, only in a different way. She used to write books, but that did not pay her very well, and when the war came, she went into the city and worked for a secretarial diploma. I think she would be of use to you, if you would go slowly with her and make allowances for her different ways of being clever. Would you like to help her?"
Mr. Travers hesitated. Then he stood up and held out his hand to her.