New Britain herald., 1927-02-24
T want to marry you"
 CHAPTER LVI

CHAPTER LVI
 Very few girls really are sur. prised when man says to them Twill you marry me. darling?"
 Most of them know whether or not a man is going to propose long before he does it. Most of them 1 work hard for that particular mo- ment, and can figure out just when <, and where the reward of their labors is coming to .them-and 1t is pretty hard for a man to get away | from a girl once she has set her heart upon marrying him. Almost impossible. as a matter of fact although men rarely suspect it! But in the case of Robbie Ram som, she was genuinely astonished when Gus .MacCloud asked her to marry him, that day on the grass above the white strip of beach. She slowly turned her big brown eyes on him, and there was ques- ton in them. Her face, still baby ishly, innocently, round, was full of wonder.
 But you don't believe in mar riage for movie people!" she said to him, and her voice was sur prised whisper and nothing more.
 Gus ran hand through his sandy hair. "No, I don't" he an- swered with a short laugh. but what am I going to do? I can't get along without you. I tried 1t.
 q tried it for all those weeks while you were clerking in that book store. I tried to get you off my mind. but you stuck there. Maybe it was because you were so 50 decent somehow. There aren't very many girls these days who won't let a man love them up if he wants to, especially in Hollywood"
 His voice and his face were full of a kind of sulkiness, as if he were half angry with her because she wasn't the kind of girl he could make love to and then for get-as he had forgotten Stella Delroy and dozens of others like her, no doubt.
 Robbie looked at him with trouble-filled eyes. Surely this was the queerest proposal ever a man had made to his own true love! Are you sure you want ne to marry you, Gus?" she asked. Sure I'm sure," he said in that same half -sullen, half-resentful way. That's what you want, isn't it?" She nodded slowly.
 Well, then. I want 1t too." He went on patiently, as if he were talking to wilful child. who had annoyed him. II want to give you just what you want. You wanted a good start in pictures-and I've given you that, haven't r." Again she nodded. He had. T want to make you happy be- cause IT want you"
 Mind, he did not say "because I love you" but because I want you" There is whole world of difference between wanting" a woman and Flowing" her.
 But Robbie did not know that Nor did she notice what he said at the time. She simply knew that he was asking her to marry him, and wondering why she wasn't happier. than she was. Surely she ought to be, she told herself. She had been trying to get him to say this very thing to her for months and | m months!
 And now that he had finally said 1t, she didn't know why she couldn't l answer him. Hadn't she been in love with him for months? Hadn't she dreamt of going up to the stucco house in the foothills, as Its mistress? Hadn't she dreamt, too, of becoming a great movie actress l with Gus for her director husband? :? And now, when 1t looked as if all of those things were coming to pass, why was she so down-heart- ed? No, not exactly down-hearted but not thrilled and gloriously happy. either. Why was she like that, she wondered.
 Perhaps it's because I've wait eQ SO lOIS loT Illlll to Say dil lliS, she thought, cool and level-headed , as ever she had been in her life.
 She looked at him, and the sun shining into her eyes made them look positively golden. fringed with their gorgeous lashes. She was loveier at that moment of doubt and hesitation than she ever had seemed to Gus MacCloud, and he settled the question by leaning forward and pulling her into his arms.
 "Doggore 1t, you're going to marry me! Do you know it?" he said, kissing her until she was rosy and breathless in his arms.
 As she lay there against him, the sun picked out the diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand, and it shone on the golden watch bracelet on the wrist of his left arm, and 1t gleamed on the carefully polished blond head above her.
 "Oh, dear, why does he wear a watch-bracelet?" she wondered. "and why is he so careful of his