The effect on the boy of her steady propinquity, of her constant
caressing touches, of the general letting-down of the bars of restraint,
was to rouse in him impulses of which he was only vaguely conscious,
and his proposal of marriage, when it finally came, was by nature of a
confession. He had kissed her, not for the first time, but this time she
had let him hold her, and he had rained kisses on her face.

"I want you," he had said, huskily.

And even afterward, when the thing was done, and she had said she would
marry him, she had to ask him if he loved her.

"I--of course I do," he had said. And had drawn her back into his arms.

He wanted to marry her at once. It was the strongest urge of his life,
and put into his pleading an almost pathetic earnestness. But she was
firm enough now.

"I don't think your family will be crazy about this, you know."

"What do we care for the family? They're not marrying you, are they?"

"They will have to help to support me, won't they?"

And he had felt a trifle chilled.

It was not a part of Marion's program to enter the Spencer family
unwelcomed. She had a furtive fear of Clayton Spencer, the fear of the
indirect for the direct, of the designing woman for the essentially
simple and open male. It was not on her cards to marry Graham and to try
to live on his salary.