"Do you mean--" she faltered in confusion while the red blood colored her cheeks.
"Yes," he answered, confidently.

"I am asking you to be my wife.

Not, however," he added hastily, "in the common, vulgar understanding of that relation.

I am offering you, dear friend, that which is vastly higher than the union of the merely animal, which is based wholly upon the purely physical and material attraction.

I am proposing marriage of our souls--a union, if you please, of our higher intellectual and spiritual selves.