He lacked the courage to ask her to marry him and then to sell him her silica. No matter how cautiously he might state the case, it would look like bribing her.

Somehow “courage” does not seem the right word. Courage is heart, and in this situation there was too much heart already. We might say that he lacked sand, but that would be too literal. Sand is silica, and to say that he lacked the sand to ask for silica is playing on words. Courage is sometimes likened to red blood, but, alas, the reddest blood is that of suicides who have inhaled illuminating gas.

What this lover really lacked was something like manganese, something to make him perfectly ductile in her hands without losing the hard edge of his commercial intent. There did not seem to be any such element.

But as he leaned against the rock in the darkness he thought of the two documents in his pocket. They were meant to show his sincerity. She was welcome to every cent that he possessed, she was welcome to decide how he should spend his life, she was welcome to make their marriage exactly as much of a marriage as pleased her.