Doreen looked startled.

"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not
at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend
myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."

"Why--especially to me?"

"Well, I'm not good enough."

"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean
it to be so."

"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot
of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in
the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to
people I hate, and--and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that
I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"

This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon
him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily
for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it
was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and
originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the
stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.

After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:

"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."