"Not easily. I should have been, as you observe, sure to know. Do you remember how I always refused to believe you? It was not until you were in that horrid Japan, where all the women are supposed to be beautiful--"
"Yes," Jimmie acquiesced. "It was when I was in Japan."
"It was then that it began to seem possible that you would be married when you came home. It was then that I began to realize that I didn't deserve to be told of your plans. For I had been a fool, Jimmie. You had been a fool, too, but not in the way you think. And so, if you will sit where I sat that horrid day, we will begin that conversation all over again and end it differently. The first speech was yours. Do you remember it?"
"But I'm going to be married," said Jimmie.
"Good boy. He knows his lesson. And now I say, 'To the most beautiful woman in the world?'"
"To the most beautiful woman God ever made. The dearest, the most clever, the most simple."
"Simple," repeated Miss Knowles with some natural surprise. "Did you say simple?"
"Simple and jolly and unaffected. As true and as bright as the stars. And I'm going to marry her--"
"Now this," Miss Knowles interjected, "is where the difference comes. You are to sit quite still and listen to me because a thing like this--however long and carefully one had thought it out--is difficult in the saying. So, I stand here before you where I can look at you; for four months are long; and where you may, when I have quite finished, kiss my hand again; for again four months are long. And I begin thus: Jimmie, you are going to be married--"
"But I knew it first," she countered, "to a woman who has learned to love you during the past three months, but who could not do it more utterly, more perfectly, if she had practiced through all the years that you and I have been friends."
"So she says," Jimmie interrupted with sudden heat. "So she says. God bless her!"
"And, ah, _how_ she is fond of you. 'Fond' is a darling of a word. It keeps just enough of its old 'foolish' meaning to be human. Proud of you, glad of you, fond of you--I think that this is, perhaps, the time for you to kiss my hand."
"You're a darling," he said as he obeyed. "But what I can't understand--"
"It's not your turn. You may talk after I finish if I leave anything for you to say. See, I go on: You are going to marry--"