This was nearly true. They could not have discussed the formalities of marriage in the crowded train, nor during the hurried lunch with a dozen cocked ears at the same table. He saw himself on sure ground here.
“Now, could we?” he pressed.
“And you talk about going to see pictures!” was her reply.
Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He recognized that it was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as though she had committed it and not he.
“My dear girl,” he said, hurt, “I acted for the best. It isn’t my fault if rules are altered and officials silly.”
“You ought to have told me before,” she persisted sullenly.
“But how could I?”
He almost believed in that moment that he had really intended to marry her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had prevented him from achieving his honourable purpose. Whereas he had done nothing whatever towards the marriage.
“Oh no! Oh no!” she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid eye. “Oh no!”
He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris.