“But if I were tied to you,” she said, “if I felt compelled, if I felt that you were being compelled, to keep on with me—well, I’m not sure that I could continue to care or to believe that you cared.”
“Then”—he interrupted.
“But,” she went on, “I’m not great enough or wise enough, or perhaps I was too long trained to conventionality, or am too recently and incompletely freed,—to——”
“It isn’t necessary,” he began, as she hesitated and cast about for a phrase. “Perhaps—in some circumstances—I’d have hoped that it would be so. But with you—it’s different. I can’t explain myself even to myself. All I know is that my theories have gone down the wind and that—I want you. I want you on the world’s terms—for better or for worse, for ever and a day. Dear, can’t you care enough for me to take the risk?”
He put his arm round her and kissed her. She said in a faint voice, hardly more than a murmur, “I think so—yes.”
“Will you marry me, Emily?” he asked eagerly, and then he smiled with a little self-mockery. “I’ve always loathed that word ‘marry’—and all other words that mean finality. I’ve always wished to be free to change my mind and my course at any moment. And now——”
She pushed him from her, but left her hand on his shoulder. “Yes, dear, but it isn’t a finality with us. We go through a ceremony because—say, because it is convenient. But if we—either of us—cease to love, each must feel free to go. If I ever found out that you had kissed me once, merely because you thought it was expected of you, I’d despise myself—and you. If I promise to marry you, dear, you must promise to leave me free.”
“Since I could not hold you—the real you—an instant longer than you wished—I promise.” He caught her in his arms and kissed her again and again. “But you’ll never call on me to redeem my promise, will you, dear?”
“That’s why I ask you to make it. If we’re both free, we may not ever care to test it,” she answered. The words came from her mind, but with them came a tone and a look from the heart that were an answer to his.
“We—you talk the new wisdom,” he said, “but—” and he kissed her once more “feel the old wisdom, or folly—which is it? No matter—I love you.”