'Good God, why?'
And again her answer was strange and came from some remote recess of
her being,--
'London is different.'
Now Charles Mann was one of those sensitive people who yield at once to
the will of another when it is precise and purposeful; and when in this
girl, whom he had collected as he collected drunkards, cats, dogs, and
other helpless creatures, such a will moved, though it cut like hot
iron through his soul, he obeyed it without argument. He, whose faith
in himself was scattered and dissipated, had in her a faith as whole as
that of a child who accepts without a murmur a whipping from his father.
'My dear girl----' he murmured.
'You know you will have to,' she said firmly.
He looked uncomfortable. His large face was suddenly ashen and yellow,
and a certain weakness crept into his ordinarily firm lips and
nostrils. The girl's eyes were blazing at him, searching him, making
him feel transparent, and so uncomfortable that he could do nothing but
obey to relieve his own acute distress.
'Yes, of course.'
'Don't you want to?'
'Yes, of course.'
'It doesn't make any difference to us inside ourselves.'
'No. Of course not.'
What he wanted to say was, 'You're pinning me down. I'm not used to
being pinned down. No one has ever pinned me down before.'
But he could not say it. He could only agree that it would be a good
thing if they married, because London was different.
'At once?' he asked.
'At once,' said she.
He rang the bell, asked for Mr Clott, and when that gentleman appeared,
ordered him to procure a special licence without delay. Mr Clott made
a note of it in his little red book, tucked his pencil behind his ear,
and trotted away, his narrow little back stiffened by elation. He, a
gentleman of the Automobile Club, for whom there was no life outside
the narrow circle whose centre is Piccadilly Circus, had been uneasy in
his mind about the young lady, who was so clearly neither married nor
purchasable, and it was a relief to him that she was to be his new
employer's wife, though he was afraid of her, and shrivelled to the
marrow in her presence.