"We're going to teach Nobody to mind . . . its own business."
And then he said what he had come near to being afraid she would say.
"You don't want to back out of it, then?" he said, and she shook her head.
"No," she answered, slowly, and then, after a pause, again, "No."
"You are willing to go through the wood with your faithful knight, Princess? He will be a faithful knight."
"Yes," she said, "I know."
And then suddenly he perceived what before had not been plain to him—that the elopement that had seemed to offer so royal a road to all that he really desired was not a road, but a barrier. That he was now in a position far less advantageous than that of a man who meets a girl all hedged around with the machinery of chaperonage, since, whereas the courtship may, where there is chaperonage, evade and escape it, where there is none the lover must himself supply its need—must, in fine, be lover and chaperon in one. Far from placing himself in a position where love-making would be easy, he had set himself where it was well-nigh impossible. He who courts a lady in her own home, surrounded by all the fences set up by custom and convention, can, at least, be sure that if his courtship be unwelcome it will be rejected. The lady need not listen unless she will. But when the princess rides through the wood with the knight whom she has chosen to be her champion she must needs listen if he chooses to speak. She can, of course, leave him and his championing, but what sort of championship is it which drives the princess back to the very dragon from which it rescued her? Edward saw, with dismal exactness, the intolerable impossibilities of the situation. They would go on—supposing her friends didn't interfere—as friends and comrades, brother and sister, she more and more friendly, he more and more tongue-tied, till at last every spark of the fire of the great adventure was trampled out by the flat foot of habit.
She might—and probably would, since men and women invariably misunderstand one another—believe his delicate reticences to be merely the indications of a waning interest, and construe knightly chivalry into mere indifference. If he made love to her—who could not get away from the love-making without destroying that which made it possible—he would be a presuming cad. If he didn't, what could she think but that he regretted his bargain? As he sat there opposite his princess, alone with her among the thickly thinning crowd, he wondered whether out of this any happiness could come to them.
When he had proposed the elopement he had meant marriage; the incurable temperamental generosity which had prompted him to offer her the help of the escape, on her own terms, now seemed to him the grossest folly. Yet how could he have held the pistol to her head, saying, "No marriage, no elopement."
Her voice broke his reverie. "I am very tired," she said. "I think I'll say good night. Do you mind?"