lder.

"My dear little Chris," he said, "I won't let you do that."

That comforted her a little, though she still looked doubtful. She
suffered him to lead her to a sofa and sit beside her, but she avoided
his eyes. The crisis had come upon her so suddenly, she knew not how to
deal with it.

"Has no one ever proposed to you before?" he said.

"No," she whispered.

"Well, it's all right," he said kindly. "Don't think I am going to trade
on your inexperience. If you want to say 'No' to me, say it, and I'll go.
I shall come back again, of course. I shall keep on coming back till you
say 'Yes' either to me or to some other man. But I hope it won't be
another man, Chris. I want you so badly myself."

"Do you?" she said. "How--how funny!"

"Why funny?" he asked.

She glanced at him speculatively; her panic was beginning to subside.
"You must be ever so much older than I am," she said.

"I am thirty-five," he said.

"And I'm not quite twenty-one." A sudden dimple appeared in the cheek
nearest to him. "Fancy me getting married!" said Chris, with a chuckle.
"I can't imagine it, can you?"

"You will soon get used to the idea," he said. "Anyhow, there is nothing
in it to frighten you--that is, if you marry the right man."

She nodded thoughtfully, her brief mirth gone. "But, Mr. Mordaunt, how is
one to know?"

He leaned towards her. "I believe I can teach you," he said, "if you will
let me try."

She slipped a shy hand into his. "But you won't ask me to marry you for a
long while yet, will you?" she said pleadingly.

"Not until you have quite made up your mind to be engaged to me," said
Mordaunt.

She looked at him quickly. "No, not then either. Not--not till I say you
may."

He laughed a little; but there was something very protecting,
infinitely reassuring, in his grasp. "And if I accept that condition,"
he said--"it's a very despotic one, by the way--but if I accept it,
may I consider that you are engaged to me?"

Chris hesitated.

"Not if I tell you that I love you," he said, "that I want you more than
anything else in life, that I would give the soul out of my body to make
you happy?"

His voice was sunk very low. There was more of restraint than emotion in
his utterance. He spoke as a man who knows himself to be upon holy
ground.

And Chris was awed. The very quietness of the man made her tremble. She
knew instinctively that here was something colossal, something that
dominated her, albeit half