uld hardly have said--"

"I can't think why! What had I done? If it was that affair of the
lease--"

"It was not. I was amazed at the time, but I got over that. It was
just--"

"What?"

"It is difficult to say. It's not an easy subject to discuss. Need we
go on?"

"I think so. I think it is my right. In justice to myself, I think you
ought to tell me how I have made myself so disagreeable. It might be
useful to me in the future!"

For all answer he steered the car to the side of the road, brought it to
a standstill, and descended from his seat. There was an air of
deliberation about the proceeding which sent a shiver down my spine.
The inference was that the enumeration of my faults was so lengthy a
business that it could not be undertaken by a man who had other work in
hand. I sat in nervous fascination, watching him slowly cross to my
side of the car, lean forward, and place both hands on the screen. His
face was quite close to mine. It looked suddenly white and tense. He
opened his lips and spoke:--

"Evelyn, will you be my wife?"

If I live to be a hundred, never--no, never shall I forget the electric
shock of that moment! To be prepared to listen to a lecture on one's
faults and failings, and to hear in its place a proposal of marriage--
could anything be more paralysing? And to have it hurled at one with no
warning, no preliminary "leading up," and from Ralph Maplestone of all
people--the most reserved, the most unsusceptible, the most woman-hating
of mankind! I sat petrified, unable to move or to speak, unable to do
anything but stare, and stare, and stare, and listen with incredulous
ears to a string of passionate protestations. Half of what he said was
lost in the dazed bewilderment of the moment, but what I _did_ hear,
went something like this:--

"You are the first woman--the only woman. Before you came I was
content. Since we met, I have been in torment. You woke me up. When a
man is roused from a trance it gives him pain. You brought pain to me--
sleeplessness, discontent, a craving that grew and grew. I wished we
had never met--you had upset my life; I believed that I hated you for
it. Delphine questioned me. It was then I told her that I disliked
you. I meant it--I _thought_ I meant it! I longed for you to disappear
and leave me in peace, yet all the time I thought of you more and more.
Your smile! Whenever we met, you smiled, and the remembrance of it
followed me