“My friend,” she said, “no! Let me tell you this. Nothing would induce me to marry you, or any man at present. I am a pauper, and as yet I have not discovered how to earn money. I am determined to fight my own little battle with the world—there must be a place for me somewhere, and I mean to find it. Afterwards, it may be different. If I were to marry you now I should feel a dependent being all my life—a sort of parasitical creature without blood or muscle. I should lose every scrap of independence—even my self-respect. However good you were to me, and however happy I was in other ways, I should find this intolerable.”
“All these things,” he muttered bitterly, “this desperate resolve to take your life into your own hands, your unnatural craving for independence, would never trouble you for a moment—if you really cared.”
“Then perhaps,” she answered, with a new coldness in her tone, “perhaps I really do not care. No, don’t interrupt me. I think that I am a little disappointed in you. You appear to be amongst those strong enough in all ordinary matters, but who seem to think it quite natural and proper to give in at once and play the weakling directly—one cares. Do you think that it makes for happiness to force oneself into the extravagant belief that love is the only thing in the world worth having, and to sacrifice for it independence, self-respect, one’s whole scheme of life. I cannot do it, David. Perhaps, as you say, I do not really care—but I cannot do it.”
He was strangely silent. He did not even reply to her for several minutes.
“I cannot reason with you,” he said at last wearily. “I speak from my heart, and you answer from your brain.”
“Believe me that I have answered you wisely,” she said, in a gentler tone, “wisely for you too, as well as myself. And now you must go back, take up your work and think all this over. Presently you will see that I am right, and then you shall take your vacation over here, and we will be good comrades again.”
He smiled bitterly as he handed her from the cab. He declined to come in.
“Will you tell Sydney that I will see him in the morning,” he said. “I am staying at the Savoy. He can come round there.”
“You will shake hands with me, please,” she begged.
He took her fingers and lifted his eyes to hers. Something he saw there made him feel for a moment ashamed. He pressed the long shapely hand warmly in his.