“What’s the good of my caring when you seem determined to do it anyhow?”
He allowed a good minute to pass before saying, “Well, if you don’t marry me some other woman will.”
“Very likely; and if you make her a promise to reform I hope you’ll keep your word.”
“She won’t be likely to exact any such condition.”
“Then you’ll probably be happier with her than you could have been with me.”
Having opened up the way for him to make some protest to which she could have remained obdurate, she waited for it to come. But nothing did come. Had she turned, she would have seen that he had grown white, that his hands were clenched and his lips compressed after a way he had and that his wild, harum-scarum soul was worked up to an extraordinary intensity; but she didn’t turn. She was waiting for him to pick up the ring, creep along behind her, and seize the hand resting on the mantelpiece, according to the ritual she had mentally foreordained. But without stooping or taking a step he spoke again.
“I picked up a book at the club the other day.”
Not being interested, she made no response.
“It was the life of an English writing-guy.”