She studied Dyckman. She must not frighten him away, or let him suspect. She laughed nervously and went back to his arms, giggling:
“Such a wonderful thing it is to have you want me for your wife! I'm not worthy of your name, or your love, or anything.”
Dyckman could hardly agree to this, whatever misgivings might be shaking his heart. He praised her with the best adjectives in his scant vocabulary and asked her when they should be wed.
“Oh, not for a long while yet,” she pleaded.
“Why?” he wondered.
“Oh, because!” It sickened and alarmed her to put off the day, but how could she name it?
When he left her at last the situation was still a bit hazy. He had proposed and been accepted vaguely. But when he had gallantly asked her to “say when” she had begged for time.
Dyckman, once outside the spell of Kedzie's eyes and her warmth, felt more and more dubious. He was ashamed of himself for entertaining any doubts of the perfection of his situation, but he was ashamed also of his easy surrender. Here he was with his freedom gone. He had escaped the marriage-net of so many women of so much brilliance and prestige, and yet a little movie actress had landed him.
He compared Anita Adair with Charity Coe, and he had to admit that his fiancée suffered woefully in every contrast. He could see the look of amazement on Charity's face when she heard the news. She would be completely polite about it, but she would be appalled. So would his father and mother. They would fight him tremendously. His friends would give him the laugh, the big ha-ha! They would say he had made a fool of himself; he had been an easy mark for a little outsider.
He wondered just how it had happened. The fact was that Kedzie had appealed to his pity. That was what none of the other eligibles had ever done, least of all Charity the ineligible.