§6
Mr. Brumley leant back, then he bent forward in a desperate attitude with his hands and arms thrust between his knees, then suddenly he recovered, stood up and then knelt with one knee upon the seat. “What are you going to do with me then?” he asked.
“I want you to go on being my friend.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“No,—I’ve hoped.”
And then with something almost querulous in his voice, he repeated, “My dear, I want you to marry me and I want now nothing else in the world.”
She was silent for a moment. “Mr. Brumley,” she said, looking up at him, “have you no thought for our Hostels?”
Mr. Brumley as I have said hated dilemmas. He started to his feet, a man stung. He stood in front of her and quivered extended hands at her. “What do such things matter,” he cried, “when a man is in love?”
She shrank a little from him. “But,” she asked, “haven’t they always mattered?”
“Yes,” he expostulated; “but these Hostels, these Hostels.... We’ve started them—isn’t that good enough? We’ve set them going....”
“Do you know,” she asked, “what would happen to the hostels if I were to marry?”
“They would go on,” he said.
“They would go to a committee. Named. It would include Mrs. Pembrose.... Don’t you see what would happen? He understood the case so well....”
Mr. Brumley seemed suddenly shrunken. “He understood too well,” he said.
He looked down at her soft eyes, at her drooping gracious form, and it seemed to him that indeed she was made for love and that it was unendurable that she should be content to think of friendship and freedom as the ultimate purposes of her life....