The wish, however, was a subconscious one—his main preoccupation was with the approaching interview. That there would be an interview between himself and Rosamund he took for granted. They would walk back from the moor together that very afternoon, and he would have to tell her that he was going away.
Morris thought of her brilliant, ardent gaze and clinging hands, and kicked the gravel about fiercely.
“Why can’t I be my own master,” he thought angrily.
Unwittingly the thought intruded itself that were he his own master, he should not make use of that independence to curtail it by the decisive step of marriage at the age of twenty-three.
“Damn,” muttered Morris. “Why aren’t things different all round?”
The desirability of a society where love-making should be smiled upon by parents and guardians with no ulterior thoughts of an announcement in the Morning Post to the effect that a marriage had been arranged, had had time to impress itself forcibly upon Morris before Mrs. Tregaskis rejoined him. She looked troubled, and Morris, attributing her expression to anxiety on his behalf, remarked with more than a touch of magnanimity:
“Look here, it seems to me that things work out this way, more or less. I’d better say good-bye to her this evening, and go off yachting somewhere. And then by the time I get back I suppose she’ll be in Scotland.”
Bertha’s brow cleared a little as she looked at him.
“Shake hands, Morris,” she said quietly. “You’re a white man.”
“You know, I shan’t leave off caring about her,” he said wistfully. “I shall never love anyone else.”