“I believe it will be ‘No’—unless you can do something.”
He looked at me searchingly, “What’s in your mind?” he asked. “Out with it! This is a big thing to me, you know.”
“It’s a big thing to her. I know it is. Yes, she has said something to me. But I think she’ll say ‘No,’ unless—well, unless you treat her as you want Val Hare to treat North Africa and primitive man. Apply your own rules, my friend. Reason in the right order!”
He smiled grimly. “Develop that a little,” he requested, or, rather, ordered.
“It’s not your feelings, or your traditions, or your surroundings, that count now. And it’s not what you think she ought to feel, nor what she ought as a fact to feel, nor even what’s she’s telling herself she ought to be brave enough and strong enough to feel. It’s what she must feel, has been bred to feel, and in the end does feel. What she does feel will beat you unless you find a way out.”
“What does she feel?”
“That it’s failure, and that all the other girls will say so—failure in the one great opportunity of her life, in the one great thing that’s expected of her; that it’s final; that she must live all her life a failure among those who looked to her for a great success. And the others will make successes! Would it be a small thing for a man? What is it to a girl?”
“A failure, to marry me? You mean she feels that?”
“Facts, please! Again facts! Not what you think you are, or are sure you are, or are convinced you could be; just what you are—Mr Kirby of the Colonial Office, lately promoted—it is promotion, isn’t it?—to be secretary to——”
“Stop! I just want to run over all that,” he said.