was as well perhaps that he kept silence until he said, as he had
come prepared to say, 'Well, I want to put that beyond a doubt--her
happiness--if I'm good enough. I want her, please, and I only hope
that she will be half as willing to come as you are likely to be to
let her go.'

It was a shock when it came, plump, like that; and I was horrified
to feel how completely every other consideration was lost for the
instant in the immense relief that it prefigured. To be my whole
complete self again, without the feeling that a fraction of me was
masquerading about in Cecily! To be freed at once, or almost, from
an exacting condition and an impossible ideal! 'Oh!' I exclaimed,
and my eyes positively filled. 'You ARE good, Dacres, but I
couldn't let you do that.'

His undisguised stare brought me back to a sense of the proportion
of things. I saw that in the combination of influences that had
brought Mr. Tottenham to the point of proposing to marry my daughter
consideration for me, if it had a place, would be fantastic.
Inwardly I laughed at the egotism of raw nerves that had conjured it
up, even for an instant, as a reason for gratitude. The situation
was not so peculiar, not so interesting, as that. But I answered
his stare with a smile; what I had said might very well stand.

'Do you imagine,' he said, seeing that I did not mean to amplify it,
'that I want to marry her out of any sort of GOODness?'

'Benevolence is your weakness, Dacres.'

'I see. You think one's motive is to withdraw her from a relation