"Should what?"

"Know. Be sure."

"I am sure of what I told you."

"And I thank you very much; but I do not--I never could--belong to
you."

What made Rosamond so wise about knowing and belonging?

She could not tell, herself; she had never thought it out before;
but she seemed to see it very clearly now. She did not belong to
Archie Mucklegrand, nor he to her; he was mistaken; their lives had
no join; to make them join would be a force, a wrenching.

Archie Mucklegrand did not care to have it put on such deep ground.
He liked Rosamond; he wanted her to like him; then they should be
married, of coarse, and go to Scotland, and have a good time; but
this quiet philosophy cooled him somewhat. As they walked up the
bank together, he wondered at himself a little that he did not feel
worse about it. If she had been coquettish, or perverse, she might
have been all the more bewitching to him. If he had thought she
liked somebody else better, he might have been furiously jealous;
but "her way of liking a fellow would be a slow kind of a way, after
all." That was the gist of his thought about it; and I believe that
to many very young men, at the age of waxed moustaches and German
dancing, that "slow kind of a way" in a girl is the best possible
insurance against any lasting damage that their own enthusiasm might