MISS   MATFIELD   WONDERS	251
When they came out of the Colladium into the aston-
ishing sanity of the night, and Norman not only sug-
gested a taxi, but actually found one, she felt she was
beginning to feel friendly towards him again. And if he
had said, "You know, Lilian, I am rather feeble and a bit
of an ass, and I know you're marvellous and far above
my style, but I've been in love with you a jolly long time
and still am, honestly I am, worse than ever in fact, so
will you marry me? I'm not doing anything very won-
derful, I know, and you might easily find it dull at first
down at Chestervern, but we'd have some fun and things
would get better all the time"; if he had said something
like that, in the proper tone of voice—rather wistful—
and with a dumbly devoted look in his eyes, she felt
there was no telling what she might reply. She could just
see herself marrying him.
But he made no such speech, and \vas clearly not in
that dumbly devoted mood at all. All the way home,
he was vaguely sentimental—what fun they'd had in the
old tennis club days and what good pals they'd been!—
and was timidly amorous, like some faint-hearted Don
Juan taking one home after a dance. Unluckily, Miss
Matfield was not sentimental, at least not on conven-
tional or Christmas-card lines, and she heartily despised
and disliked the timidly amorous male, who could not
let one alone but had not passion enough, or courage,
to make him risk a sound snubbing. He would slip an
arm round her waist and she would tell him to take it
away because it was uncomfortable, as indeed it was.
And then he would say "Ah, Lilian, you're not very
kind to me," in a ridiculous mooing voice, like a farm-
hand trying to ape the artful philanderer. It was all
terribly irritating. When at last, as the taxi began