d was not irritated by it.
For a sensitive woman she had steady nerves, and could bear with the
incongruous and the grotesque; and, besides, there was nothing excessive
about her love-affair. Good-humour was the dominant note of her
relations with Mr. Wilcox, or, as I must now call him, Henry. Henry
did not encourage romance, and she was no girl to fidget for it. An
acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would
retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm
an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

In this spirit she promised to marry him.

He was in Swanage on the morrow bearing the engagement ring.

They greeted one another with a hearty cordiality that impressed
Aunt Juley. Henry dined at The Bays, but had engaged a bedroom in the
principal hotel; he was one of those men who know the principal hotel by
instinct. After dinner he asked Margaret if she wouldn't care for a turn
on the Parade. She accepted, and could not repress a little tremor; it
would be her first real love scene. But as she put on her hat she burst
out laughing. Love was so unlike the article served up in books; the
joy, though genuine was different; the mystery an unexpected mystery.
For one thing, Mr. Wilcox still seemed a stranger.

For a time they talked about the ring; then she said: "Do you remember
the Embankment at Chelsea? It can't be ten days ago."

"Yes," he said, laughing. "And you and your sister were head and ears
deep in some Quixotic scheme. Ah well!"

"I little thought then, certainly. Did you?"

"I don't know about that; I shouldn't like to say."

"Why, was it earlier?" she cried. "Did you think of me this way earlier!
How extraordinarily interesting, Henry! Tell me."

But Henry had no intention of telling. Perhaps he could not have told,
for his mental states became obscure as soon as he had passed through
them. He misliked the very word "interesting," connoting it with wasted
energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts were enough for him.

"I didn't think of it," she pursued. "No; when you spoke to me in the
drawing-room, that was practically the first. It was all so different
from what it's supposed to be. On the stage, or in books, a proposal
is--how shall I put it?--a full-blown affair, a hind of bouquet;
it loses its literal meaning. But in life a proposal really is a
proposal--"

"By the way--"

"Oh, very well."

"I am so glad," she answered, a little surprise