"That's very awkward," he said, "because—Osmond, I want to marry."
"To marry! You said she had given you up!"
"Oh, Electra!" That issue had withdrawn into a dim past. "Osmond, I have spoken to Rose."
"Rose!" Now again Osmond felt the blood beating in his ears. Was it the impulse of fight, he asked himself, or another, as savage? But this time he did not mean to be overborne. Peter was speaking simply and boyishly, with a great sincerity.
"I see now there never was anybody but Rose, from the minute we met. I told her yesterday."
"So you are—engaged." Osmond brought out the commonplace word with a cold emphasis.
Peter looked at him, surprised.
"No. She's not to be had for the asking. I had to tell her. But I've got to earn her. If you knew her as I do, you'd see that."
Osmond's brain was in a maze of longing to hear what she had said, and with it a fierce desire to escape that knowledge. Also he was overborne by a passionate recoil from his own suggestion of cutting off his brother's income. At least he might have some share in their happiness. He could work here like a gnome underground, delving for the gold to deck their bridal. And underneath was that new pain at the heart: that earth pang so sickening that it might well threaten to stop the heart's beating altogether.
"There never was anything like her," said Peter, out of his new dream. "She needs happiness, sheer happiness, after what she has been through. That settles it about living abroad." He looked up brightly. "We must be in Paris."