“Come,” she says in a voice that is like her eyes even as before it had been like her face. “Sit down beside me, John. Here.”
She leads me, holding my hand. When I am beside her on the couch her hand lifts from mine as if it had been kissed.
“You mean,” she said, “that you love me really, John? that you want me to live with you, John?”
“I want you to be my wife.”
“Does that mean, you are sure you love only me? That you will never want to live with another woman?”
My eyes gave her my answer: she saw in them, also, my surprise at her questions. She went blithely on.
“Could you love me, John, and also sometimes still love someone else?”
“It might be, Mildred. But in that case I would not now pray as I do, that you may become my wife.”
She looked down at my hand and her little fist beat on it softly.
“How am I to know?”