“I’m such an ordinary, every day sort of fellow,” he said wistfully, “that, after I began to realise how wonderful you are, I’ve been terribly afraid I wasn’t up to you.
“Even if I have cursed out your theories and creeds, it almost seemed impertinent for me to do it, because 365 you really have so many talents and accomplishments, so much knowledge, so infinite a capacity for things of the mind, which are rather out of my mental sphere. And I’ve wondered sometimes, even if you ever consented to marry me, whether such a girl as you are could jog along with a business man who likes the arts but doesn’t understand them very well and who likes some of his fellow men but not all of them and whose instinct is to punch law-breakers in the nose and not weep over them and lead them to the nearest bar and say, ‘Go to it, erring brother!’”
“Jim!”
For all the while he had been drawing her nearer as he was speaking. And she was in his arms now, laughing a little, crying a little, her flushed face hidden on his shoulder.
He drew a deep breath and, holding her imprisoned, looked down at her.
“Will you marry me, Palla?”
“Oh, Jim, do you want me now?”
“Now, darling, but not this minute, because a clergyman must come first.”
It was cruel of him, as well as vigorously indelicate. Her hot blush should have shamed him; her conversion should have sheltered her.
But the man had had a hard time, and the bitterness was but just going.