She could not bear to hear him running himself down in this way, and impulsively rising from her chair she laid both her little hands on his.
“No, you’re not!” she declared. “I won’t have you say so! You’re a very charming man,--or you _can_ be--if you choose!--and I dare say I have often misunderstood you. And perhaps--perhaps you’ll marry some nice woman some day--and you’ll _have_ to be always charming then!--for _her_ sake!”
“I think I see myself at it!” he said. “Charming for _her_ sake!--the ‘nice woman’! Oh, ye gods! My dear child, have you ever thought what a ‘nice woman’ is, in the full meaning of that common term? A man flies from her as from the plague! Propriety and commonplace in one! You’re not a ‘nice woman’!--if you were--”
She echoed his laughter, still resting her hands on his.
“Why then”--and his voice vibrated with an emotion he really felt--“I should never have grown so fond of you as I am nor should I have dared to ask you to marry me as I have done!”
Poor little Sentimentalist! The grave tenderness of his tone made her gentle heart beat quickly--she looked up and met his eyes bent down upon her with a protective kindness that was wonderfully moving;--she could not help being touched by the thought that this “clever” man, this light of a literary “clique” actually found her lovable; and for the moment all his odd brusqueries, rudenesses and cynicisms were forgotten. Almost--yes!--almost she could have loved him! The swift doubt crossed her brain,--was she wise to refuse him? Her thoughts seemed drifting to and fro like leaves in a storm,--then, all suddenly she stooped and kissed one of the hands on which her own lay.
“I cannot kiss the place and make it well!” she said in a tremulous little way. “For I suppose ‘the place’ this time is in your heart!--or you would say so! But do please believe that I am very grateful for your affection!--and--and--that I am deeply sensible of the honour you have done me!”
“That’s like a bit of Jane Austen,” he said. “Prosy Jane Austen whom all the critics have agreed to praise because she can no longer gain any advantage from their approval! I suppose you know,--you ought to if you don’t,--that, nine out of ten of the so-called ‘literary’ oracles haven’t read a line of Jane Austen and wouldn’t for their lives! She’s a sort of refuge where they take shelter when they want to shy stones at modern novelists,--they cower under her wing and say, ‘We turn with relief to the delicate delineations of Jane Austen’--when they all know there isn’t a single character of Jane Austen that ‘lives,’--or if one _did_ live, he or she would be such a confounded prig and bore that the rest of society would run away from the very contact. No, my dear child!--please don’t ‘be sensible of the honour I have done you’--it’s no particular ‘honour’ to a pretty woman to ask her to become the life companion of an elderly and by no means good-looking man. I have likened myself unto a wall--a wall of safety and protection--and if ever you find such a wall necessary or useful--well!--here I stand!”