X.
"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."