She did not find it so piquant, though, in the library next Sunday afternoon when he was clutching at her hand and asking her to be his wife.  She awoke as from a dream to the perception of a solemn and grotesque fact.

“Oh, please!” and she tried to tear her hand away.

He clung on desperately.  “Eileen—­don’t say you don’t care at all.”

“I’m not Eileen, and I particularly dislike you at this moment.  Let me have my hand, please.”

He dropped it like a stinging nettle.  “I was hoping you’d let me keep it,” he murmured.

“Why?” She was simple and pitiless.  “Because we read Plato together?  That was platonic enough, wasn’t it?”

“You can jest about what breaks my heart?”

“I am very sorry.  I like you.”

His breathing changed, “like a fish thrown back into the water,” Eileen thought.  She hastened to add, “But it’s not what a wife should feel.”

“How do you know what a wife should feel?”

Eileen screwed up her forehead.  “If I felt it, I should know, I suppose.”

“No, you mightn’t.  You’ve liked to come here and talk to me.”

“Because I like books.  And you talk like a book.”

“That was before I fell in love.  I didn’t talk like a book just now.”

“When you took my hand!  More like a book than ever.  I’ve read it all—­lots of times.”

“Oh, Eil—­Miss O’Keeffe—­you are very cruel.”

Eileen smiled.  “I am not—­I’m very kind—­I threw you back into the water.”

He gasped, as though out of it again.  “Do you mean I am not grown enough?”

She flushed and improvised on his theme.  “Not quite that.  You hooked yourself, as you threatened to do.  But suppose I had landed you.  You know the next step—­hot water.  What a lot you would have got into, too!”

“You are thinking of my mother?”

“Yes, raising Cain, I think you said once.  Oh, dear, swim about and be thankful.”  And a vision of Mrs. Maper’s amazement twitched the corners of her lips and made them more enchanting.

“I’m not so cold-blooded as all that.  But if you do throw me back, let it be with the promise to take me again, when I am grown.  I don’t say it to tempt you, but you know I shall be very rich.”

“Indigestible, do you mean?”

“Oh, please let us drop that metaphor!  Metaphors can never go on all fours.”

“Certainly not when they have fins.”

“Don’t jest, Eil—­Miss O’Keeffe!  Let me redeem you from your sordid life.”

“Why is it sordid?  You said work was divine.”

“You can work in a higher sphere.”

“And this is the Socialist!  I really thought you’d want me to turn factory lass.”

“You are laughing at me.”

“I am perfectly serious.  I won’t drag you down from Socialism, and a head-shawl wouldn’t become me.”

“Why, you’d look sweet in it.  Dear, dear, Miss O’Keeffe—­”