“I said, who knows?—or something like that. And then he cabled—but I didn’t cable back—I only wrote—trying to say no—but not saying it decidedly enough.... And so it’s gone on—he writing and cabling both—and I only writing, but letting him think—just little by little—and not seeing how far I was being swept along.”
I wanted to be clear as to the facts.
“Then do I understand that you’re engaged to him?”
“I told him I wouldn’t be engaged again—that engagements for me had come to be grotesque. I said that if we did it we’d—we’d just go somewhere and be married.”
“If you did it? Then it’s possible—”
“No; because he’s expecting it. I’ve allowed him to expect it—just little by little, you understand—and not seeing how far I was letting myself in.... And now he’s told some people who used to know about it when I was engaged to him before—and that binds me because it will get about—so that if I were to break it off with him the second time I should be a laughing-stock—and quite rightly.”
“Oh, Regina, how could you?”
Taking no note of the fact that for the first time in my life I had called her Regina, she answered, simply: “I tell you I don’t know. If I do know it was because I was so lonely—and I’m over twenty-six—and feel older still—and nobody seemed to care about me but him—and I couldn’t bear the idea of going on and never marrying any one at all—which is what Elsie Coningsby said would happen to me—and what I’d been half wishing for myself—and yet half afraid of.... And you—”
“Yes? What about me?”
“There was a nurse at Taplow, that Miss Farley—”