"What is your objection to me?"
"Mine?" She seemed to reflect before answering. "The principal one, I think, is your tyranny. You crush out every individuality in your neighborhood. You seem to want a monopoly of the light and air."
"Was that what used to make you so silent and shut up in yourself?"
She nodded. "I simply couldn't begin to grow. You wouldn't have it."
"But now?" he said.
She smiled absently. "It often amuses me to see how it irritates you that you can't—crowd me. You do so firmly believe that a woman has no right to individuality."
He was not really listening. He was absorbed in watching her slowly take off her long gloves; as her white forearms, her small wrists, her hands, emerged little by little, his blood burned with an exhilaration like the sting of a sharp wind upon a healthy skin——
"Neva, will you marry me?"
So far as he could see, she had not heard. She kept on at the gloves until they were off, were lying in her lap. She began to remove her hat pins; her arms, bare to the elbows, were at their best in that position.
"A year ago, two years ago," he went on, "I thought we had never been married. I know now that we have never been unmarried."