"Gad!" said Mr. Gerald.
The road was empty in the soft beating rain. With the slow and perfectly sure way he did everything he ran the car to the curb and turned to me.
"Cosma," he said.
I looked at him. Just a word of mine, and my whole life would be settled, to be lived with him, and with all that I began to suspect I was meant to have. I kept looking at him. I felt a good deal the way I had felt when I looked at a long-distance telephone and knew, with a word, I could talk a thousand miles. And I didn't feel much more.
He took me in his arms and drew my wet face close to his, that was warm, as his lips were warm.
"I want you for my wife," he said.
It seemed so wonderful that he should love me that I thought mostly about that, and not about whether I loved him at all. I sat still and said:
"I don't see how you can love me. There's so much I've got to learn yet, before I'm like the ones you know."
"You're adorable," he said; "you're glorious. I love you. I want you with me always.... Cosma! Say maybe. Say just that!"
So then I did the thing so many girls had done before me and will do after me: