The mockery in her face gave place to a serious look. “I wonder,” she said, “does love sing at all in a cage? I’ve never known an instance, though I’ve read and heard of them. But they’re almost all a long way off, or a long time ago, or among old-fashioned people.”
“But I’m old-fashioned, I find—and won’t you be, dear? And I think we might teach our wild bird to sing in a cage, don’t you?”
Emily made no answer but continued to watch the dark trees, that closed in on either side of the shining drive.
“Since I’ve known you, Emily, I’ve found a new side to my nature—one I did not suspect the existence of. Perhaps it didn’t exist until I knew you.”
“It has been so with me,” she said. She had been surprised and even disquieted by the upbursting of springs of tenderness and gentleness and longing since she had known Marlowe.
“Do you care—a little, dear?” he asked.
She nodded. “But what were you going to say?”
“I’ve always disliked the idea of marriage,” he went on. “There’s something in me—not peculiar to me, I imagine, but in most men as well—that revolts at the idea of a bond of any kind. A man falls in love with a woman or a woman with a man. And heretofore I’ve always said to myself, how can they know that love will last?”
“They can’t know it,” replied Emily. “And when they pledge themselves to keep on loving and honouring, they must know, if they are capable of thinking, that they’ve promised something they had no right to promise. I hate to be bound. I love to be free. Nothing, nothing, could induce me to give up my freedom.”
Marlowe had expected that she would gladly put aside her idea of freedom the moment he announced that he was willing to sacrifice his own. Her earnestness disconcerted, alarmed him. “Emily!” he said in a low, intense tone, putting his hand upon hers. “Tell me”— She had turned her head and they were now looking each into the other’s eyes—“do you—can’t you—care for me?” He wondered at the appeal in his voice, at the anxiety with which he waited for her answer. “I cannot live without you, Emily.”