"Joan, will you marry me?" he said abruptly.
It was the same old familiar phrase that she had heard so often before, and she found it hard to believe that they were two middle-aged people instead of the boy and girl of twenty years ago, but in another moment she had flushed with annoyance.
"Is that joke in very good taste, Richard?"
He stared at her. "Joke? But I mean it!" he stammered.
She sprang up and he followed her. "Richard, have you gone quite mad?"
"I was never more sane in my life; I ask you: Will you marry me?"
She looked at him incredulously, but something in the expression of his eyes told her that he did mean it. "Oh, Richard," she said with a catch in her voice, "I can't! I never could, you know."
He said: "Joan, if I weren't so ridiculously middle-aged, I'd go down on my knees, here in the grass, and beg you to take me. I want you more than anything else in the world."
She said: "You've made some awful mistake. There's nothing of me to want; I'm empty, just a husk."
"That's not true, Joan," he protested. "You're the only woman I've ever cared for. I want you in my life, in my home; I want your companionship, your help in my work."