Poor little chap--how terribly he would miss me!" finished Desire artlessly.
She had accepted the possibility, then! Spence's heart gave a leap and was promptly reproved for leaping.

This was not, he reminded himself, an affair of the heart at all.

It was a coldly-thought-out, hard-headed business proposition.

Such a proposition as his father's son might fittingly conceive.

The thing to do now was to stride on briskly and avoid sentiment.
"Then as we seem to agree upon the essentials," he said, "there remains only one concrete difficulty, your father.