“I don’t care whether he’s angry or not. It isn’t that, Nan. It’s that just the little bit I said to him, he takes to mean—everything.”
“Of course he does, Patty. You can’t tell a man you’ll learn to love him unless you mean that you expect to succeed and that you’ll marry him. What else could you mean?”
“Of course, if I said it of my own accord. But, don’t you see, Nan, that I only said it because I promised her I would, and it doesn’t seem fair, that I should have to say it because she made me.”
“You’re right, Patty, it doesn’t. And you ought not to be held by that infamous performance! I just begin to see it as it is, and I am not going to have you tortured. You don’t really love Phil, or you’d know it; and this ‘promise’ and ‘learning to love him’ is all foolishness. I’m going to tell him, or have Fred do so, of that promise business, and then if he wants to ask you again, and let you answer of your own will, and not by anybody’s coercion, very well.”
“Oh, Nan, what a duck you are! What would I ever do without you! Will you really do that? I tried to tell Phil how it was, but he was so—so——”
“Precipitate?”
“Yes, that; but I meant more that he was so glad to have me say that yes, that it seemed too bad to tell him that awful story about his aunt.”
“It is an awful story, but he ought to know it. Why, he’d rather know it. You two couldn’t live all your lives with that secret between you—could you?”
“Of course we couldn’t.”
“And then, too, it isn’t fair to him. If you’re answering his question under duress,—I never did know what duress meant,—but anyway, if you’re answering his questions at his aunt’s commands, he certainly ought to know it. It’s wrong to let him think it’s your own answer, if it isn’t.”