"Only three more chances," said he, "of being with you, and when I thought most I understood you, understood you so well that my arms seemed the only place in which to hold you, I find I understand you less than ever. You don't ask what it means. You don't say "What are we going to do?" I've told you I love you, but you don't appear to want to know anything about the future. It seems to me that any other girl would be wanting to know what was to become of her. You're so quiet--so silent."
Climbing back down the cliffs, holding on to one of the pine trees in her descent, Mary had turned and smiled at him. It was an inscrutable smile to Liddiard. It was not that he tried to understand it. It was, as it penetrated his mind, that he knew it to be quite impossible of comprehension. More it was as if Nature had smiled upon him, than the mere bright light of the parting of a woman's lips. In its illumination it seemed to reveal to him the vision of himself in a strange powerlessness. He felt like some tool of a workman as it lies idle on the bench, waiting the moment for those hands to pick it up and give it purpose. So it appeared to him might a carpenter have smiled with pleasure at the chisel he knew his hands could wield for perfect work. All the more that he had meant to say dried into silence on his lips.
"I don't want to know anything about the future," said Mary as she walked on, "I know you love me and I think I understand what you love and why you love. I know I'm not sophisticated. I've no experience of the world. I don't pretend to understand these things in the light of experience. I haven't got any wisdom about it, but I feel it's not unreal or impossible for you to love me and love your wife as well. I don't feel I want you to say you don't love your wife in order to prove that you love me. I think it would finish everything in my mind if you said you didn't love her. I'm not thinking about the future, because there is no future as you used the word. I don't ask what we're going to do, because I know what we're going to do."
"What are we going to do?" he asked.
"In two days' time," she replied, "you're going home to Somerset and I'm going to stay on here in Bridnorth."
Suddenly she turned again swiftly and barred his passage as he came along down the cliff path behind her.
"Why don't you understand me?" she asked abruptly. "It all seems so plain. Don't you realize how I've been brought up? I know there's a certain sacredness in marriage. I've been trained to regard it as one of the most unbreakable ties in the world. I wouldn't dream of expecting or claiming anything from you, however much you said you loved me. Whatever happened, I shouldn't dream of that. You're half afraid of it. I can see you are. I don't love you any the less because I see it. It seems natural you should be afraid. It seems to me most men would be with most women. But you needn't be."
She had let him be drawn close to her again. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked with all his passion into her eyes.
"That's the first time you've said you loved," he whispered. "Do you know what it sounded like to me?"
She shook her head.