“You think one can’t afford to bury the past?”
Avery looked at her quickly. “What made you ask me that?”
“I thought you seemed to admire Michael’s youthful foolishness.”
“I do really. I admire any one that’s steadfast even to a mistaken idea. It’s strange to meet an Englishwoman here,” he said, looking intently at Sylvia. “One’s guard drops. I’m longing to make a confidante of you, but you might be bored. I’m rather frightened of you, really. I always was.”
“I sha’n’t exchange confidences,” Sylvia said, “if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“No, of course not,” Avery said, quickly. “Last spring I was in love with a girl....”
Sylvia raised her eyebrows.
“Oh yes, it’s a very commonplace beginning and rather a commonplace end, I’m afraid. She was a ballet-girl—the incarnation of May and London. That sounds exaggerated, for I know that lots of other Jenny Pearls have been the same to somebody, but I do believe most people agreed with me. I wanted her to live with me. She wouldn’t. She had sentimental, or what I thought were sentimental, ideas about her mother and family. I was called away to Spain. When my business was finished I begged her to come out to me there. That was last April. She refused, and I was piqued, I suppose, at first, and did not go back to England. Then, as one does, I made up my mind to the easiest thing at the moment by letting myself be enchanted by my surroundings into thinking that I was happier as it was. For a while I was happier; in a way our love had been a great strain upon us both. I came to Morocco, and gradually ever since I’ve been realizing that I left something unfinished. It’s become a kind of obsession. Do you know what I mean?”
“Indeed I do, very well indeed,” Sylvia said.
“Thanks,” he said with a grateful look. “Now comes the problem. If I go back to England this month, if I arrive in England on the first of May exactly a year later, there’s only one thing I can do to atone for my behavior—I must ask her to marry me. You see that, don’t you? This little thing is proud, oh, but tremendously proud. I doubt very much if she’ll forgive me, even if I show the sincerity of my regret by asking her to marry me now; but it’s my only chance. And yet—oh, I expect this will sound damnable to you, but it’s the way we’ve all been molded in England—she’s common. Common! What an outrageous word to use. But then it is used by everybody. She’s the most frankly cockney thing you ever saw. Can I stand her being snubbed and patronized? Can I stand my wife’s being snubbed and patronized? Can love survive the sort of ambushed criticism that I shall perceive all round us? For I wouldn’t try to change her. No, no, no! She must be herself. I’ll have no throaty ‘aws’ masquerading as ‘o’s.’ She must keep her own clear ‘aou’s.’ There must not be any ‘naceness’ or patched-up shop-walker’s English. I love her more at this moment than I ever loved her, but can I stand it? And I’m not asking this egotistically: I’m asking it for both of us. That’s why you meet me in Tetuan, for I dare not go back to England lest the first cockney voice I hear may kill my determination, and I really am longing to marry her. Yet I wait here, staking what I know in my heart is all my future happiness on chance, assuring myself that presently impulse and reason will be reconciled and will send me back to her, but still I wait.”