‘Why not let them go for ever—as things that have had their use!’ cried Geoffrey Arbuthnot.
‘As things that have had their use? Are you speaking of my classics? You, who told me, a fortnight ago, I might come out in the third class of a tripos?’
‘A fortnight ago is not to-day.’
‘Your good opinion has had time to cool? Pray be frank, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ It was in her mood to quarrel—at least, to reach the brink of a quarrel with him, if ’twere only for sweet relenting’s sake. ‘I don’t one bit come up to your ideal of a model woman?’
‘I abhor models, irrespective of their sex. Marjorie, why are we talking in this strain?’ And now her fingers reached his lips. ‘I want you to be like nothing, to be nothing, but yourself.’
‘And I, myself, shall never alter. I may be too dull-witted to pass the entrance examination for Girton. That will be my misfortune. I shall always be athirst for knowing things, for seeing life—on its seamy side, especially—with my own eyes, for getting to the real worst of everything! And I shall always,’ added Marjorie, with a look that indubitably had in it the nature of a challenge, ‘retain my Bartrand temper.’
‘I have a temper also,’ answered Geff, drawing her a little closer to him. ‘Do not omit that item from our prospects of future joy. You are passionate. I am unforgetting. Stormy elements, these, to be brought into daily, hourly contact under the same roof.’
‘And has your ideal of life always been one of conflict?’ asked Marjorie.
At the domestic picture, quietly touched in by Geoffrey, the lines of her lips had softened against her will.