“Women who advance such arguments are liable to forget that their business after marriage should be quite different from before,” he said in a low tone.
She looked at him with unembarrassed eyes. “Supposing I recognised that. Supposing I said, I will be Domesticity itself after I am married. But I still require you to wait several years for me—as I must attain the perfection for which I am aiming, or my soul will always yearn after it, and I will never be content? What then?”
He did not speak. She turned and played a few chords on the piano. “I’m nineteen years old—nearly twenty. Say you wait three years and a half for me—until I’m twenty-three. Would you do that?”
“Joy, you’re talking perfect rot. To wait over three years—to waste the best years of our life we might be having together——”
“Stop a minute. I will be only twenty-three then. You will be only twenty-five. That is an age at which most young people nowadays think themselves lucky to start—and so would you if you didn’t have your own little inherited income through no effort of your own. Only three years and a half, Grant! Would you do it?”
“You know perfectly well you’re asking too much for any man. Be reasonable, Joy. What has gotten into you to make you talk like this? It seems to me that after I have fought out my problem, and come to you like this, there might be a little something expected of you.”
She smiled, faintly amused. “Since you had decided, you thought there was no more to it—but you see, Grant, all that time I was going through experiences and thoughts—that have made me see that as far as I’m concerned—there’s no more to it.” She rose, her gesture spelling dismissal. “So you wouldn’t wait—three years and a half, or whatever it might be. I think that shows, Grant, that your love was about the same as mine.”
Mesmerized by the finality of her tone, he started to the door, but stopped halfway. “Am I to believe—that you are always going to take this stand—be this way?”
“Please do believe it. I am not drunk with music—I shall always take this stand with you—because, you see, I don’t really love you, and I suppose that—makes all the difference!”
He gained the door, and stood looking back. She was regarding him with parted lips, cheeks darkly flushed, a little pulse beating in her temple, her hair blanketing her shoulders in folds of gold. “And please,” she articulated in a thin thread of sound—“please forget me—very quickly!”