ROBIN'S WAY OF DOING IT.

What happened when Robin locked the door on himself and Dolly is now set down here. Strictly speaking it ought to come later, but there is no need to make a mystery about it. I have taken the account of the proceedings mainly from the letter which Dolly wrote to Dilly three days later.

It would be useless to reproduce that document in full. In the first place, it contains a good deal that is not only irrelevant but absolutely incomprehensible. There is one mysterious passage, for instance, occurring right in the middle of the letter, beginning, _To turn the heel, knit to three beyond the seam-stitch, knit two together, purl one, turn: then knit ten, knit two together, knit one, purl one_ ... introduced by an airy, "By the way, dear, before I forget"----which appears to have no bearing on the context whatever.

In the second place, Dolly's literary style is as breathlessly devoid of punctuation as that of most of her sex. Commas and notes of interrogation form her chief stock-in-trade, though underlining is freely employed. There is not a single full-stop from start to finish.

The extracts from the letter here reproduced have been edited by me.

Other details of the incident have been tactfully extracted by Kitty and myself--chiefly Kitty, I must confess--from the principals themselves, and the whole is now offered to the public, unabridged, with marginal comments, for the first time.

On entering the little room on the landing Dolly dropped on to a shabby but comfortable old sofa behind the door, and said, with a contented sigh--

"I'm so tired, Robin. Aren't you? Let's sit down and not talk till it's time to go downstairs again. It's--Robin, what _are_ you doing?"

Robin was locking the door.

That operation completed, he turned and looked round the little room.

There was an arm-chair in the corner, but he came and sat down on the sofa beside Dolly. Dolly gazed at him dumbly.

"He looked so utterly grim and determined" [says the letter], "that my heart began to bump in a perfectly fatuous way. I felt like a woman who is going to be murdered in a railway tunnel.

"He sat down, and one of his huge hands was suddenly stretched towards me, and I thought at first he was trying to grab one of mine. I did my best to edge away along the sofa, but I was up against the end already.

"Then his hand opened, and something dropped into my lap. It was the key of the door.

"'I have locked it,' he said, 'not with any intention of keeping you in, but in the hope of keeping other people out. You are perfectly free to get up and go whenever you please, if you don't wish to listen to what I have to say.'

"Well, dear, I suppose I ought to have risen to my full height, and, with a few superb gestures of haughty contempt, have swept majestically from the room. But--I didn't! I saw I was in for another proposal, and as the man couldn't eat me I decided to let him do his worst.

"It was a weird proposal, though." [_Spelt 'wierd.'_] "It wasn't exactly what he said, because one is never surprised at anything a man may say when he is proposing; but the way he said it. All men say pretty much the same thing in the end, but most of them are so _horribly_ nervous that they simply don't know what they're talking about for the first five minutes or so. (Do you remember poor little Algy Brock? He was nearly _crying_ all the time. At least he was with me, and I suppose he was with you too.) But Robin might have been having a chat with his solicitor the way he behaved. I'll tell you..."

Robin apparently began by telling Dolly, quite simply and plainly, that he loved her. Then he gave a brief outline of the history of his affection. It had begun at the very beginning of things, he said, almost as soon as he discovered that he could distinguish Dolly from Dilly without the aid of the brown spot. "And that was after I had been in the house just three days," he added.

For some time, it appeared, he had been content to be pleasantly in love. He enjoyed Dolly's society when it came his way, but with native caution he had taken care to avoid seeking too much of it in case he should gradually find himself unable to do without it.

"I saw from the first," he said, "that you were entirely unconscious of my feelings towards you; and I would not have had it otherwise. If I was to succeed at all it must be as an acquired taste; and acquired tastes, as you know, are best formed unconsciously."

Dolly nodded to show her detached appreciation of the soundness of this point.

"I permitted myself one indulgence," Robin continued. "I dedicated a book to you."

"O-oh!" said Dolly, genuinely interested. "Was that me? Dilly and I thought it must be a girl in Scotland."

Then she realised that this was a step down from her pedestal of aloofness, and was silent again. Robin went on--

"Yes, it was you. It was a sentimental thing to do, but it afforded me immense pleasure. Love lives more on the homage it pays than that which it receives. Have you noticed that?"

"I have never thought about it," said Dolly distantly.

"I thought not," replied Robin; "because it shows, what I have always been tolerably certain of, that you have never been in love. However, to resume." [_"Like a lecture on Greek Roots, or something equally fusty,"_ observes Dolly at this point.] "The time came, as it was bound to come, when I realised that I must tell you I loved you"----

"I rather like the way he always said _'love'_ straight out," comments Dolly: "most men are so frightened of it. They say 'am fond of' or 'care for' or something feeble like that. All except the curate with pink eyes. (You remember him? Dora Claverton took him afterwards on the rebound.) He said 'esteem highly' I think."

----"or leave this house altogether. But before doing that I had to decide two things: firstly, whether I was good enough for you, and secondly, if not now, whether I ever should be."

Dolly's half-closed eyes opened a trifle wider. This was certainly a methodically-minded young man.

"It was difficult to decide the first question in practice," continued Robin. "In theory, of course, any man who is a _man_--honest, clean, and kind--is a fitting mate for any woman. Don't you think so?"

"No," said Dolly.

"I see," said Robin gently. "The theoretical is mainly the man's point of view: woman looks straight to practical results. She is rather inclined to take the virtues I have mentioned for granted, or do without them; and she founds her opinion of a man almost solely upon his capacity for boring her or stimulating her. In other words, she is guided by her instinct. Isn't she?"

"Is she?" said Dolly, determined this time to maintain her attitude of indifference.

"I think so," said Robin. "However, knowing how impossible it is for one sex to look at a matter from the point of view of another, I decided to stick to my own methods. So I made a summary of my points, good and bad.

They are these: I am strong and healthy; I possess an appetite for hard work; I was born with brains; I have considerable capacity for organisation----"

"Some people have a good conceit of themselves!" said Dolly.

"_Every_ one should have," replied Robin with conviction. "And," he added, "most of us have. _I_ have--_you_ have!"

"Oh!" said Dolly indignantly.

"But a man may have a good conceit of himself," Robin continued soothingly, "without being what the world calls conceited. Modesty consists not in taking a low estimate of one's own worth, but in refraining from the expectation that the world will take a high one."

Dolly nodded gravely.

"I see," she said. "I didn't know you meant that. Yes, there is something in what you say."

"I thank you," said Robin. "It is very helpful to me to get this courteous hearing from you; for to tell you the truth," he added rather explosively, "I find it a very, very great effort to speak to you like this at all. You see, I am talking of things that go right to the centre of the human heart--things that a man never speaks of to a man, and only once to a woman. It has to be done, but it is hard, hard!"

He drew a long breath, in a manner which made the sofa tremble; and Dolly suddenly realised the height and depth of the barrier of reserve and pride that this grave and undemonstrative man had had to break down before he could offer her the view of his inmost soul to which he considered that she was entitled. She felt a sudden pang of awe, mingled with compassionate sympathy. She was not given to wearing her heart on her sleeve herself.

"Well," continued Robin, evidently relieved by this little confession, "those are my assets. On the other hand, I have no money, no position--I will not say no birth, for I come of good, honest stock--and my prospects are at present in the clouds. But to one type of wife all that would not matter a scrap. There are two types, you know--two types of _good_ wife, that is."

"I would have given worlds," says Dolly here, "just to have said 'Oh!'

or something; but for the life of me I couldn't help asking what the two types were."

"The first," said Robin, "is the wife who loves her husband because she is proud of him, because he is successful and powerful, and people admire him; and not because she has any conception of or sympathy with the qualities which have made him what he is. To such a one the husband must come with his reputation ready made, and they will enjoy it together. The other type loves her husband because she sees through him, yet believes in him and sympathises with his aims, and intends to make a success of him. And she usually does."

"And which am I?" inquired Dolly.

"The latter, undoubtedly--the higher type. And therefore, if there had been nothing else in the way, I think I should have given myself the benefit of the doubt. But----"