“It’s a step on the way to your marrying a man you’re not in love with, and my not marrying at all.”
“And as the world is at present, aren’t there worse tragedies than that?”
Irony of which she must have been unaware pricked my dreams of celibate consecration to a cause as a pin pricks a bubble.
“So that if I stand still and let you go on—”
She threw me a quick glance. “And aren’t you going to?”
The answer to that question was what in the back of my mind I had been trying to work out.
“Wouldn’t it depend,” I said, picking the right words, “on which of the three it is? There’s one I couldn’t interfere with—not without disregarding gratitude and honor.”
“Do you want me to tell you which?”
But I didn’t—not then. Too much hung on what the knowledge would bring me. There were decisions to which I couldn’t force myself at once. In saying this I added, “But though I can’t interfere with him without disregarding gratitude and honor, I don’t say that I sha’n’t disregard them.”
In the clear starlight her eyes had a veiled metallic brightness.