He studied her profile. An air of concentration flowed from her. ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ he said.

She laughed quietly. Above them the tree stirred in a little wind that quickly died. ‘I was just thinking something silly. As usual.’ She rubbed her lips lightly over his and for an instant he could not breathe.

‘What were you thinking silly?’

She hesitated a moment. ‘What I would say if you asked me to marry you.’

‘What I would …’?

‘No, what I would say if you asked me,’ she laughed shrilly and gay.

His laugh accompanied hers. And she lay there smiling. It took a minute before he realized she was waiting.

‘What would you say?’ he asked, striving to make it all a joke.

‘I probably would say no,’ she said.

Dumbfounded, he lay there with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. It seemed impossible. He did not know her again. If he lost her …

‘Why … why would you say no?’ he asked, anxiously.

‘Because I’d probably ruin your life.’ Her smile went.

‘Oh no …’ He would be dreaming her again …

‘I probably would. You’d have to go dancing with me. I got to have a dance once in a while.’

‘I’d love to go dancing with you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t want to go dancing with you.’ And at the dream’s end she would not be there.

‘Would you, really?’

‘Sure,’ he laughed, as though she were a child, ‘I’d do anything you liked. I just never went out much because I didn’t have the kind of woman who appealed to me. Really, Gertrude, I never stop dunking about you. It even seems sometimes that I had been thinking about you for years before I met you.’

He was thrilling her a little now, just a little. And he had grasped her hand where it lay on his chest.

‘I always had an idea of a certain kind of woman. I can’t remember when it started but I’ve had it a long time. And she carried herself just like you. That’s why you struck me so the first time I saw you.’

He could see her eyes glistening in the semidarkness. She was waiting for him to do something extraordinary, he felt, and he did not know what to do. So he moved his face toward hers and she kissed him lightly and then looked at him again. And they both began to breathe in longer draughts.

‘Marry me, Gertrude,’ he pleaded. It sounded theoretical to him.

‘All right,’she said.

He could not hold his awkward position after a moment and he let go of her hand and lay back.

After a while she said,’ When will we do it?’

‘When would you like?’ he asked, turning to her. He could not get over how theoretical it was. It did not seem to be inevitable, suddenly.

‘The first of the month?’

‘All right. I’d like you to come home and meet my mother,’ he said, wondering if he would still know her by the first of the month.