“This world is a soft world,” I said, “in spite of my present
disasters. I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for—in a
year I could be a prosperous man.”
“No,” she said, “I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby.”
“But—!” I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded
pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of
hopeless cross-purposes.
“Look here,” she said. “I have been awake all night and every night. I
have been thinking of this—every moment when we have not been together.
I’m not answering you on an impulse. I love you. I love you. I’ll say
that over ten thousand times. But here we are—”
“The rest of life together,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be together. Now we are together. Now we have been
together. We are full of memories I do not feel I can ever forget a
single one.”
“Nor I.”
“And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else
is there to do?”
She turned her white face to me. “All I know of love, all I have ever
dreamt or learnt of love I have packed into these days for you. You
think we might live together and go on loving. No! For you I will have
no vain repetitions. You have had the best and all of me. Would you
have us, after this, meet again in London or Paris or somewhere,
scuffle to some wretched dressmaker’s, meet in a _cabinet
particulier?_”
“No,” I said. “I want you to marry me. I want you to play the game of
life with me as an honest woman should. Come and live with me. Be my
wife and squaw. Bear me children.”
I looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry
her yet. I spluttered for words.
“My God! Beatrice!” I cried; “but this is cowardice and folly! Are
_you_ afraid of life? You of all people! What does it matter what has
been or what we were? Here we are with the world before us! Start clean
and new with me. We’ll fight it through! I’m not such a simple lover
that I’ll not tell you plainly when you go wrong, and fight our
difference out with you. It’s the one thing I want, the one thing I
need—to have you, and more of you and more! This love-making—it’s
love-making. It’s just a part of us, an incident—”
She shook her head and stopped me abruptly. “It’s all,” she said.
“All!” I protested.
“I’m wiser than you. Wiser beyond words.” She turned her eyes to me and
they shone with tears.
“I wouldn’t have you say anything—but what you’re saying,” she said.
“But it’s nonsense, dear. You know it’s nonsense as you say it.”