“My mother—”
“My dear Arthur,” Sylvia interrupted, sharply, “if your mother ran away with a groom, she’ll be the first person to sympathize with my point of view.”
“I suppose you’re trying to be cruel,” said Arthur.
“And succeeding, to judge by your dolorous mouth. No, my dear, let the suggestion of marriage come from me. I sha’n’t be hurt if you refuse.”
“Well, are we to pretend we’re married?” Arthur asked, hopelessly.
“Certainly not, if by that you mean that I’m to put ‘Mrs. Arthur Madden’ on a visiting-card. Don’t look so frightened. I’m not proposing to march into drawing-rooms with a big drum to proclaim my emancipation from the social decencies. Don’t worry me, Arthur. It’s all much too complicated to explain, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not going to marry you merely to remove the world’s censure of your conduct, and as long as you feel about marrying me as you might feel about letting me carry a heavy bag, I’ll never marry you.”
“I don’t feel a bit like that about it,” he protested. “If I could leave you, I’d leave you now. But the very thought of losing you makes my heart stop beating. It’s like suddenly coming to the edge of a precipice. I know perfectly well that you despise me at heart. You think I’m a wretched actor with no feelings off the stage. You think I don’t know my own mind, if you even admit that I’ve got a mind at all. But I’m thirty-one. I’m not a boy. I’ve had a good many women in love with me. Now don’t begin to laugh. I’m determined to say what I ought to have said long ago, and should have said if I hadn’t been afraid the whole time of losing you. If I lose you now it can’t be helped. I’d sooner lose you than go on being treated like a child. What I want to say is that, though I know you think it wasn’t worth while being loved by the women who’ve loved me, I do think it was. I’m not in the least ashamed of them. Most of them, at any rate, were beautiful, though I admit that all of them put together wouldn’t have made up for missing you. You’re a thousand times cleverer than I. You’ve got much more personality. You’ve every right to consider you’ve thrown yourself away on me. But the fact remains that you’ve done it. We’ve been together now a year. That proves that there is something in me. I’m prouder of this year with you than of all the rest of my life. You’ve developed me in the most extraordinary way.”
“I have?” Sylvia burst in.
“Of course you have. But I’m not going to be treated like a mantis.”
“Like a what?”