He brushed it aside, as one anxious only for facts.
“You are not really fond of me,” he said.
“Well, I am not romantically in love with you. I never was with any one, and I don’t suppose I ever shall be, but I like you well enough to marry you, and that is something, you know.”
“You don’t like me well enough to marry me in August and come to Russia with me.” If he had been watching her face at this suggestion, he would not have needed an answer, but fortunately he was looking another way.
“You know I can not leave my uncle, old and ill——”
“Will you be any better able to leave him in three months?”
She hesitated, but as if it were her own motives that she was searching. “When you come back there will be no need for leaving him.”
“Oh,” said Emmons. He glanced through the curtains at the old man’s thin back, as if the idea of a common household were not quite agreeable to him.
There was a short pause, and then he went on,
“It sometimes strikes me that if it weren’t your uncle it would be something else.”