She put her hand gently on to his arm, but he moved in a way that was meant to show that he had not noticed it. "Laura seems to me very happy," he said, unable not to argue, "happier now than she was before she married."
"Oh, I know she's happy—I'm not afraid of not being happy"—she could not bear him to think that—"but she's grown so soft, Tony, and she used to be so keen. It's just as if she were drunk with happiness—it has got the better of her. She's not herself any more. I can't explain, because I don't understand what it is has changed her, but it has made me feel that marriage is dreadfully important. It does things to you. It alters you. It's a terrible risk."
She paused, hoping that he would help her, that he would agree with her, but he said nothing.
"I've always thought that however much I loved anyone I should love them proudly, as a free person, as an equal. And I thought Laura was like that too—and now she's horrible, she's abject—I've seen her looking up at Harry like a dog!"
Another thought came to her, and she flushed. "That white thing I was knitting is for Laura's baby. She was pleased when I told her I was making it. But, Tony, if that were going to happen to me I'd die rather than have people know, have all those women chattering about it and fussing over me and bringing me cushions and telling me to keep my feet up. If you didn't tell them they'd guess—it's indecent."
He looked up quickly. "We could go right away," he said, and stopped. She had turned to the mantelpiece, and her face was hidden on her arm.
Anthony felt very much to blame. He turned up the electric light, as a sign that the time for common-sense had come. "Darling," he told her, "I've said so—you shall do just what you like! I oughtn't to have bothered you—I ought to have remembered that you're so young! But it is all right, isn't it? I mean, you do love me?" he went on, made anxious by the heaviness of his heart.
"Aren't you sure?" he pressed, as she did not speak.
His tone had loosed a tumult of misgiving in Rosemary's mind. He was hurt, she had hurt him—the idea brought with it a sense of intimacy. Perhaps she had been wrong to be afraid—he was Tony, not Harry, not just a man. She had not meant to hurt him. Perhaps she had been giving words to thoughts that she ought to have left in their vague confusion, indefinite, disregarded. She had let herself be afraid, but what she owed him was love and belief, not fear. Perhaps this fear was one of the hard things women have to conquer. Perhaps they all felt it, but they were braver than she was. If she let him go now, his hopes bruised, his desires rejected, wouldn't she be guilty of treachery, wouldn't she be throwing away her great opportunity? If you love freely, proudly, she told herself, you don't rule your love by your fear. If she was really Tony's equal, his mate and his comrade, why was she afraid? She had given herself to him, and she could not, because she was a coward, take her gift back again.
She went up to him, and put her arms round his neck. "I love you better than anything else in the world," she said, "and I want to marry you."