"Maurice, you're keeping something from me. Something's happened.
Something's made you unhappy."
"Yes. Something's made me unhappy."
The Garthdale road. Before them, on the rise, the white highway showed
like a sickle curving into the moor. At the horn of the sickle a tall ash
tree in the wall of the Aldersons' farm. Where the road dipped they
turned.
He slouched slowly, his head hung forward, loosening the fold of flesh
about his jaw. His eyes blinked in the soft November sunshine. His
eyelids were tight as though they had been tied with string.
"Supposing I asked you to release me from our engagement?"
"For always?"
"Perhaps for always. Perhaps only for a short time. Till I've settled
something. Till I've found out something I want to know. Would you,
Mary?"
"Of course I would. Like a shot."
"And supposing--I never settled it?"
"That would be all right. I can go on being engaged to you; but you
needn't be engaged to me."
"You dear little thing.... I'm afraid, I'm afraid that wouldn't do."
"It would do beautifully. Unless you're really keeping something back
from me."
"I am keeping something back from you.... I've no right to worry you with
my unpleasant affairs. I was fairly well off when I asked you to marry
me, but, the fact is, it looks as if my business was going to bits. I may
be able to pull it together again. I may not--"
"Is _that_ all? I'm glad you've told me. If you'd told me before it would
have saved a lot of bother."
"What sort of bother?"
"Well, you see, I wasn't quite sure whether I really wanted to marry
you--just yet. Sometimes I thought I did, sometimes I thought I didn't.
And now I know I do."
"That's it. I may not be in a position to marry you. I can't ask you to
share my poverty."
"I shan't mind that. I'm used to it."
"I may not be able to keep a wife at all."
"Of course you will. You're keeping a housekeeper now. And a cook and a
housemaid."
"I may have to send two of them away."
"Send them all away. I'll work for you all my life. I shall never want to
do anything else. It's what I always wanted. When I was a child I used to
imagine myself doing it for you. It was a sort of game I played."
"It's a sort of game you're playing now, my poor Mary.... No. No. It
won't do."
"What do you think I'm made of? No woman who cared for a man could give
him up for a thing like that."
"There are other things. Complications.... I think I'd better write to
your mother. Or your brother."
"Write to them--write to them. They won't care a rap about your business.
We're not like that, Maurice."