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meeting, he had told her that he hoped she would marry him; he would be honoured, he said. “I’ve never proposed to anybody before. I really haven’t.”
    She almost laughed. There was a seriousness about the way he spoke which made her think he was reciting lines that somebody had taught him; perhaps she might find the very play from which they were lifted. “It’s very sudden.” That was all she could think of to say, trite as it was.
    “Which means yes? Please tell me that this means yes. If you had wanted to say no, then you would have said it. Anything else must mean yes—it must.”
    She wanted to be firm, but it was difficult. There was something winning about his manner that made him hardto resist; he was like an eager schoolboy. “I don’t know. You can’t expect somebody to make up her mind just like that. It’s been five weeks.”
    “Six. Almost seven. And I knew immediately. I really did, you know. I was quite certain that you were the one. You have to marry me.”
    Now she laughed, and he had taken that as her answer. In her first private moment thereafter, she looked into a mirror, staring at herself, wide-eyed. You are a person to whom another person has proposed. It seemed absurd; risible. She had laughed earlier on, immediately after he had declared himself, but her laughter had been taken as some sort of assent. She would have to clear it up; she would have to sit Richard down and talk to him seriously. She would brush aside his persuasive banter and get to the essential point: she was not ready to get married. They could get to know one another better, and there was always the possibility that at some point their friendship might become something more, but not now.
    She tried that, but he seemed not to take her seriously. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. We can think about things. Plenty of time for that. But you and I know how we feel, don’t we?”
    “Well, frankly, Richard, I’m not sure that you know how I feel. If only you would listen to me …”
    But as the months went past, and they still saw one another every day, meeting in that small tea-shop off King’s Parade, where the waitresses, who seemed fond of him,addressed him as “Dickie,” she found that her feelings were changing. She looked forward to their meetings now; counted the hours and minutes before they would be together again. Was this what it meant to
fall
for somebody? She believed it was. And if she had to marry
someone
—and she mostly assumed that she did—then would she ever find anybody quite as charming as Richard? He would be kind to her. They would have fun together. Could one ever really expect anything more than that out of marriage?
    Her father approved of Richard; approved of what he described as his prospects. Richard was going into the family firm of wine merchants—not just any wine merchants, but substantial ones, with connections to the port trade as well. They had their own warehouse in Bordeaux and a share in another one on the Douro. And Richard charmed him, as he could charm anybody, simply by smiling. He did not have to say anything; he merely allowed his smile to work for him. It disarmed.
    “I’m so happy for you, my dear,” her father said. “After all that sadness, the business with your mother, and all that …”
    “I’m glad that you like him. He’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”
    His father waved a hand in the air. “Of course. But you never would …”
    She waited. What would she never do? Choose the wrong sort of man?
    Richard was not that; she was sure of it. He was gentle,and amusing, and so she said yes, she would marry him. Later.
    He looked at her earnestly. “After we leave Cambridge?”
    “Of course.”
    “June, then.”
    She had not meant it to be that soon, but he was impossible to argue with. She acquiesced. What difference did it make, now that her future was to be with him.
    Her friend Janey, the one who had taken her to the poetry reading, quizzed her. “Are you