“MISS BLAKE—SUSAN—Susie.” He took her other hand in his. His voice rang out clear and unimpeded. “It cannot have escaped your notice that I have long entertained towards you sentiments warmer and deeper than those of ordinary friendship. It is love, Susan, that has been animating my bosom. Love, first a tiny seed, has burgeoned in my heart till, blazing into flame, it has swept away on the crest of its wave my diffidence, my doubt, my fears, and my foreboding, and now, like the topmost topaz of some ancient tower, it cries to all the world in a voice of thunder: ‘You are mine! My mate! Predestined to me since Time first began!’ As the star guides the mariner when, battered by boiling billows, he hies him home to the haven of hope and happiness, so do you gleam upon me along life’s rough road and seem to say, ‘Have courage, George! I am here!’ Susan, I am not an eloquent man—I cannot speak fluently as I could wish—but these simple words which you have just heard come from the heart, from the unspotted heart of an English gentleman. Susan, I love you. Will you be my wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help-meet, consort, partner or better half?”
“RONNIE sort of grunted and said ‘I say!’ and I said ‘Hullo?’ and he said ‘Will you marry me?’ and I said ‘All right,’ and he said ‘I ought to warn you, I despise all women,’ and I said ‘And I loathe all men’ and he said ‘Right-ho, I think we shall be very happy.’”