“I cannot say. I don’t think it was my nature to: circumstance hindered me, perhaps. I have regretted it for another reason. This great remissness of mine has had its effect upon me. The older I have grown, the more distinctly have I perceived that it was absolutely preventing me from liking any woman who was not as unpractised as I; and I gave up the expectation of finding a nineteenth-century young lady in my own raw state. Then I found you, Elfride, and I felt for the first time that my fastidiousness was a blessing. And it helped to make me worthy of you. I felt at once that, differing as we did in other experiences, in this matter I resembled you. Well, aren’t you glad to hear it, Elfride?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered in a forced voice. “But I always had thought that men made lots of engagements before they married—especially if they don’t marry very young.”
“So all women think, I suppose—and rightly, indeed, of the majority of bachelors, as I said before. But an appreciable minority of slow-coach men do not—and it makes them very awkward when they do come to the point. However, it didn’t matter in my case.”
“Why?” she asked uneasily.
“Because you know even less of love-making and matrimonial prearrangement than I, and so you can’t draw invidious comparisons if I do my engaging improperly.”
“I think you do it beautifully!”
“Thank you, dear. But,” continued Knight laughingly, “your opinion is not that of an expert, which alone is of value.”
Had she answered, “Yes, it is,” half as strongly as she felt it, Knight might have been a little astonished.
“If you had ever been engaged to be married before,” he went on, “I expect your opinion of my addresses would be different. But then, I should not——”
“Should not what, Harry?”