Anthony put his arm round her and pulled her so close to him that she could not see his face. "Do you really want to know—are you quite sure you want to know—won't you just take it from me?" she heard him saying.
"No," she said, "I'd rather you told me!" She was not afraid of knowing about life, she reminded herself, her cheek safely against his coat. She hoped he would always tell her everything.
He was silent for a moment, and then he drew her closer still. "You see," he said, "Rosemary darling, I want you so much. I used to be happy just because I loved you and you loved me. I liked to be with you, and talk to you, and argue about things and feel that we were great friends. But now I seem to have lost all that—" He hesitated.
Rosemary did not speak, and he went on. "It isn't that I love you less, only it's different. I love you more—I think about you all day, I can't help it, I keep seeing you, and remembering how beautiful you are, and how jolly your hair is—and all that sort of thing."
"The fact is, young woman," he went on, "you've become an obsession, do you see? A poet would be delighted if he lay awake all night thinking of your eyelids, but I'm not a poet. And if I can't do my work properly what's to become of us?"
Rosemary still said nothing, and the lightness died out of his voice. "I hate it," he told her, "it's perfectly beastly. Even when I'm with you I'm wondering all the time whether you really love me, and when I'm away from you I'm simply miserable. I know it's idiotic, but I can't help it. And it's spoiling everything, it isn't the way you ought to be loved. It's greedy and ugly. I suppose really you're too fine for me. But I feel as if once we were married it would be all right again."
He turned, trying to see from her face what Rosemary thought, but the room had grown dark, and the fire threw confusing shadows. She did not move; he supposed she was thinking about it in her lucid, reasonable way, when suddenly he heard her whisper, "Tony—darling—I can't! Don't make me!"
His sense of disappointment was so immediate and so strong that he jumped to his feet. He could not sit next her, touching her, when they were so deeply divided. He picked up a bowl that stood on the mantelpiece and pretended, in the dark, to examine it.
"It's all right," he reassured her, "it's quite all right, old darling. Even if I could, I wouldn't make you do anything you didn't want to do."
But Rosemary was on her feet now, appealing to him. "Tony, let me explain—you explained to me—of course I'll marry you if you feel we must—it isn't that I don't love you. It's Laura. It's the change in Laura that has made me afraid of getting married."