"I can't. Not after that dreadful climb."

"Then I shall wait until you are ready. But we do not need to continue this conversation."

The professor sighed. "This," he said, "is what comes of taking a woman at her word."

"What?"

"I might have known," he went on guilefully, "that you didn't really mean it. No young girl would."

"Mean what?"

"That you had no room in your scheme of things for ordinary marriage.

Of course you were talking nonsense. I beg your pardon."

"Will you kindly explain what you mean!"

"I will if you will sit down so that I may talk to you on my own level.

You see, your determination not to marry struck me very much at the time because it voiced my own--er--determination also. I said to myself, 'Here are two people sufficiently original to wish to escape the common lot.' I thought about it a great deal. And then an idea came. It was, I admit, the inspiration of a moment. But it grew. It certainly grew."

Desire sat down again and folded her hands over her knees.

"I will listen."

"It is very simple," he hastened to explain. "Simplicity is, I think, the keynote of all true inspiration. An idea comes, and we are filled with amazement that we have so long ignored the obvious. Take our case.

Here are we two, strongly of one mind and wanting the same thing. A perfectly feasible way of getting that thing occurs to me. Yet when I suggest this way you jump up and rush away."

"I haven't rushed yet."

"No. But you were going to. And all because you cannot be logical. No woman can."

His listener brushed this away with a gesture of impatience.

"I can prove it," went on the wily one. "You object to marriage, yet you covet the freedom marriage gives. Now what is the logical result of that? The logical result is fear--fear that some day you may want freedom so badly that you will marry in order to get it."

"It is not--I won't."

"I knew you would not admit it. But it is true all the same. The other night when you said 'marriage is hideous,' I saw fear in your eyes.

There is fear in your eyes now."

The girl dropped her eyes and raised them again instantly. Her slanting eyebrows frowned.

"Nevertheless," she said, "I shall not marry."

"But you will, as an honest person, admit the other part of the proposition--that you want something at least of what marriage can give?"

"Yes."

"Well then--that states your case. Now let me state mine. I, too, have an insuperable objection to marriage. My--er--disinclination is probably more soundly based than yours, since it is built upon a wider view of life. But I, too, want certain things which marriage might bring. I want a home. Not too homey a home, in the strictly domestic sense (Aunt Caroline is strictly domestic) but a--a congenial home. I want the advice and help of a clever woman together with the sense of permanence and security which, in our imperfect state of civilization, is made possible only by marriage. And I, too, have my secret fear. I am afraid that some day I may be driven--in short, I am afraid of Aunt Caroline."

Desire's inquiring eyebrows lifted.

"A man--afraid of his aunt?"

"Yes," gloomily, "it is men who are afraid of aunts. It is not at all funny," he added as her eyes relaxed, "if you knew Aunt Caroline you wouldn't think so. She is determined to have me married and she has a long life of successful effort behind her. One failure is nothing to an aunt. She is always quite certain that the next venture will turn out well. And it usually does. In brief, I am thirty-five and I go in terror of the unknown. If I do not marry soon to please myself, I shall end by marrying to please someone else. Do you follow me?"

"Make it plainer," ordered Desire soberly. "Make it absolutely plain."

"I will. My proposition is, in its truest and strictest sense, a marriage of convenience. Marriage, it appears, can give us both what we want, a formal ceremony will legalize your position as my secretary and free you entirely from the interference of your father. It will permit you to accept freely my protection and everything else which I have.

Your way will be open to the things you spoke of the other night, freedom, leisure, money, travel, books. The only thing we are shutting out is the thing you say you have no use for--love. But perhaps you did not mean--"

"I did."

"Then, logically, my proposal is sound."

"Am I to take all these things, and give nothing?"

"Not at all. You give me the things I want most, freedom, security, the grace of companionship, and collaboration in my work, so long as your interest in it continues. I will be a safely married man and you--you will be a window-gazer no longer. There is only one point"--the speaker's gaze turned from her and wandered out to sea--"I can be sure of what I can bring into your life," his voice was almost stern, "but I warn you to be very sure of what you will be shutting out."

"You mean?"

"Children," said Spence crisply.

"I do not care for children."

The professor's soberness vanished. "Oh--what a whopper!" he exclaimed.

"I mean, I do not want children of my own."

"But supposing you were to develop a desire for them later on?"

She nodded thoughtfully.

"I might," she acknowledged. "But in my case it would be merely the outcropping of a feminine instinct, easily suppressed. I am not at all afraid of it. Look at all the women who are perfectly happy without children."

"Hum!" said the professor. "I am looking at them. But I find them unconvincing. There are a few, however, of whom what you say is true.

You may be one of them. How about Sami?"

"Sami? Oh, Sami is different. He is more like a mountain imp than a child. I don't think Sami would seem real anywhere but here. If anyone were to try to transplant him he might vanish altogether. Poor little chap--how terribly he would miss me!" finished Desire artlessly.

She had accepted the possibility, then! Spence's heart gave a leap and was promptly reproved for leaping. This was not, he reminded himself, an affair of the heart at all. It was a coldly-thought-out, hard-headed business proposition. Such a proposition as his father's son might fittingly conceive. The thing to do now was to stride on briskly and avoid sentiment.

"Then as we seem to agree upon the essentials," he said, "there remains only one concrete difficulty, your father. He would object to marriage as to other things, I suppose?"

"Yes, but we should have to ignore that."

"You wouldn't mind?" somewhat doubtfully.

"No. I have always known that a break would come some day. It isn't as if he really cared. Or as if I cared. I don't. If I should decide that there is an honest chance for freedom, a chance which I can take and keep my self-respect, I am conscious of no duty that need restrain me."