"And I'd have accepted you," said Eve with a little laugh.
"And him?" asked the Doctor.
Eve was silent, looking across the garden. Finally she shrugged her slim shoulders and sighed.
"I don't know," she said, frankly.
"Well," began the Doctor, slowly and judicially. Then he stopped, wondering what he had started to say.
"Why should I?" challenged Eve, a trifle querulously.
"You shouldn't, unless you feel that you want to."
"But I don't know whether I want to—or don't want to."
The Doctor studied her face a moment, until her eyes dropped and the flush deepened in her cheeks. Unseen of her, he smiled.
"Take plenty of time to find out," said the Doctor, softly and kindly. "Don't marry him until you are sure that you can't be happy without him, my dear. Don't try it as an experiment. That's what makes unhappy marriages; at least, that's one thing. There are others too numerous to mention. There's just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth." The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl's grave face into the green blur of the garden. Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his watch. "Well, well, I must be on my way," he said briskly. "I'm a vastly busy old man."