“I don’t wish to touch you,” he went on, “I just wish to look at you—so tall, so straight, so—so alive, and to love you and be happy.” Then he laughed and turned. “But you’ll catch cold. Let us walk on.”
“So you are trying to make a career?” she asked after a few minutes’ silence.
“Yes—trying—or, rather, I was. And shall again when you have gone your way and I mine.”
Marian was amazed at herself. Every tradition, every instinct of her life was being trampled by this unknown whom she had just met. And she was assisting in the trampling. In fact it was difficult for her to restrain herself from leading in the iconoclasm. She looked at him in wonder and delighted terror.
“Why do you look at me in that way?” he said, turning his head suddenly.
“Because you are stronger than I—and I am afraid—yet I—well—I like it.”
“It is not I that is stronger than you, nor you that are stronger than I. It is a third that is stronger than both of us. I need not mention the gentleman’s name?”
“It is not necessary. But I’d like to hear you pronounce it. At least I did a moment ago.”
“I’ll not risk repetition. I’ve been thinking of what might have been.”
“What?” Marian laughed a little, rather satirically. “A commonplace engagement and a commonplace wedding and a commonplace honeymoon leading into a land of commonplace disillusion and yawning—or worse?”