anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything else, I mean--even if she does know _that_."

Cornelia considered of it. "But what else need she--in particular--know?
Isn't that the principal thing?"

"Well"--and he resumed his circuit--"she doesn't know anything that we
know. But nothing," he re-emphasised--"nothing whatever!"

"Well, can't she do without that?"

"Evidently she can--and evidently she does, beautifully. But the
question is whether _I_ can!"

He had paused once more with his point--but she glared, poor Cornelia,
with her wonder. "Surely if you know for yourself----!"

"Ah, it doesn't seem enough for me to know for myself! One wants a
woman," he argued--but still, in his prolonged tour, quite without his
scowl--"to know _for_ one, to know _with_ one. That's what you do now,"
he candidly put to her.

It made her again gape. "Do you mean you want to marry _me?_"

He was so full of what he did mean, however, that he failed even to
notice it. "She doesn't in the least know, for instance, how old I am."

"That's because you're so young!"

"Ah, there you are!"--and he turned off afresh and as if almost in
disgust. It left her visibly perplexed--though even the perplexed
Cornelia was still the exceedingly pointed; but he had come to her aid
after another turn. "Remember, please, that I'm pretty well as old as
you."

She had all her point at least, while she bridled and blinked, for this.
"You're exactly a year and ten months older."

It checked him there for delight. "You remember my birthday?"

She twinkled indeed like some far-off light of home. "I remember every
one's. It's a little way I've always had--and that I've never lost."

He looked at her accomplishment, across the room, as at some striking,
some charming phenomenon. "Well, _that's_ the sort of thing I want!" All
the ripe candour of his eyes confirmed it.

What could she do therefore, she seemed to ask him, but repeat her
question of a moment before?--which indeed presently she made up her
mind to. "Do you want to marry _me?_"

It had this time better success--if the term may be felt in any degree
to apply. All his candour, or more of it at least, was in his slow,
mild, kind, considering head-shake. "No, Cornelia--not to _marry_ you."

His discrimination was a wonder; but since she was clearly treating him
now as if everything about him was, so she could as exquisitely meet it.
"Not at least," she convulsively smiled, "until you've honoura