"Well, you know, I was engaged to him. I was twenty-five, and I'd been dreading the future, and it seemed, in a way, the most unexpected chance of escaping everything I was most afraid of. But I don't know if you'll ever believe it if I tell you how much I hesitated."
"I shall believe anything you tell me. Why did you hesitate?"
"Because he was twenty-one, and an ass," replied Miss Marchrose, with the most unexpected candour. "And I didn't even like him much; he irritated me nearly unbearably sometimes. It was very ungrateful of me, but it seemed to me that he loved me without rhyme or reason—he knew nothing whatever about me. And I told him that I didn't care for him. But I think, partly, the fuss his people made helped to make him want it all the more, just to show them that he would take his own way. They'd always made a baby of him at home, I gathered, and he had suddenly begun to resent it."
"Yes," said Julian thoughtfully, "that tallies with the little I remember of the Isbisters, when I met them several years ago. Did you ever stay there?"
"No. His father and mother were much too angry about it, but he had money of his own and they couldn't stop it. We were more or less engaged when he had his accident. He'd been at home, and he'd been hoping that his mother was coming round a little, and that perhaps he could take me to see her in London. He was very fond of his mother; but poor Clarence! he was like a little boy—talking of the 'lark' it would be to steal a march on them all, and get married at a Registrar's Office one morning."
"Would you have done that?"
"I thought I would—I was back at work by then, and in the hostel again. He used to come and take me for walks and drives and out to dinner—and often and often I was miserable and felt that I was taking everything from him, and giving him nothing at all. And besides——"
"What?"
"I suppose no one gives up romantic ideals, if they've had them, without a struggle," said Miss Marchrose, speaking very fast.
"Believe me," said Julian gently, "it is worth while to remain faithful to one's romantic ideals. People will tell you that to relinquish them means progress—but don't believe them. One is the poorer all the rest of one's life for having let them go."