“Indeed there would,” interjected her suitor with a sort of boyish blitheness, “and I’d jolly well hear you say it, too.”
“It’s no good my playing at things any more,” said Rosamund, frowning a little as she sought for her words. “I don’t mean because I feel superior or anything ridiculous of that sort—but simply because it doesn’t amuse me any longer.”
“I don’t want it to amuse you.”
“Well, I can’t do it with any conviction, if you like that better.”
“I don’t care if you do it with conviction or not, sweetheart—I’ll convince you afterwards,” said Morris, his eyes smiling at her after their endearing wont.
“No you couldn’t, Morris. Not the real part of me—the only part that matters to either of us, in the least.”
Morris asked her to marry him again and again, and Rosamund marvelled at her own indifference, was thrilled and shaken by his pleading, and yet refused him with a weary certainty of being true to a standard which, once seen, she must hold to.
The last time that she said she could not marry him finally brought conviction to Morris.
“Oh, do leave me,” she cried. “I’m so tired, and it’s all no use. There’s more than one sort of love in the world, Morris, and your sort and my sort aren’t meant for one another.”
“I could show you that they are, if——”