‘I have had no experience save in conflict,’ answered Geff Arbuthnot, truthfully.
‘When you were a really young man, four or five years ago, did you look forward to the Taming of a Shrew as a likely sequel to your term of happy bachelorhood?’
The question was jestingly meant, lightly spoken. But Geoffrey’s dark cheek reddened.
‘Oh, if I have said anything indiscreet, forgive me.’ Marjorie watched him with attention. ‘You must grow used, remember, to the faults of my fine qualities. One of these is inquisitiveness. It would delight me to know, precisely, what you used to think and feel when you were twenty years old. I suppose you were not so preternaturally wise, always, as you are now?’
‘I have never been wise at any period of my life,’ said Geoffrey Arbuthnot.
‘But when you were nineteen, say, what did you think, what did you hope, what did you look forward to?’
‘What I hoped, what I looked forward to, was—madness.’ The unguarded answer broke from him instantly. ‘If you would be kind to me, Marjorie,’ he added, ‘let the past rest. There is enough, a great deal more than enough, to be grateful for in the present.’
Marjorie, on this, drew herself to her full height. She looked at him with the instinct of a child who would unriddle a secret by his own close reading of another’s face. She freed her hands abruptly from his clasp.
‘What you hoped, what you looked forward to was—madness! Do you mean in regard of University laurels?’
‘We are not talking of University laurels. We are talking,’ said Geff, honestly, ‘of the happiness beyond happiness, the companionship for life of two human souls that suit each other.’