And she raised her velvet eyes gravely: "Do you really want me ?" "Yes....

I don't know why I never asked you before--" "It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for you not to be ashamed of me." He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny little thing!" "Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately.

"I'm having a heavenly time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part of it ...

of course you _are_ part of it," she added, hastily--"most of it! I only meant that I--I'd like to be a little in your other life--have you enter mine, a little--just so I can remember, in years to come, an evening with you now and then--to see things going on around us--to hear what you think of things that we see together....

Because, with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my guard....