“It’s what—what Christian told us two or three nights ago. We’re in a world where—where love and marriage are no longer the burning questions. They’re too small. Don’t you see?”
We continued to stare, but we agreed with him.
“So—so,” he faltered, “I want you—I want you both—to—to put it all off.”
“The moratorium of love?” I suggested.
“The moratorium of everything,” he took up, “but what—what Christian put before us. I see that now more plainly than I ever saw anything in my life. We’ve got to give everything up—and get it back—different. We shall be different, too—and things that we’re struggling over now will be settled for us, I suppose, without our taking them into our own hands at all. That’s how I look at it, if you two will agree.”
“I agree, Stephen,” Regina said, with the same tranquillity.
“And I, too, old chap.”
“I’m—I’m going over,” he stumbled on, “with the first medical unit from Columbia—”
“Oh, Stephen! How splendid!”
He contradicted her. “No, it isn’t. I’m not doing it from any splendid motives whatever. I’m going just to—to try and get out of myself. Don’t you see—you two? You must see. I’m—I’m sunk in myself; I’ve never been anything else. That’s what’s been the matter with me. That’s why I never made any friends. That’s why you, Frank, have never really cared a straw about me—in spite of all the ways I’ve made up to you; and why you, Regina, can hardly stand me. But, by God! you’re both going to!”