“But I don’t want to marry any of them,” she said, “or in fact anyone at all. Why can’t we go on as we are? Why is life always changing?”
“I wish it wasn’t,” I said; “but the law of life is change. We either go forward—or backward. Every quiet little time such as this that I spend with you, alone, talking and not (which is the true curse of Adam) getting ready to do anything else, I am full of fearfulness, just because I know that there is no standing still. They are all stolen. To you they may be dull; to me these moments are beautiful.”
Rose put her hand on mine. “They’re not dull,” she said. “I love them too.”
She glanced at the clock.
“There!” I said. “You’re spoiling it! It is exactly as I said. What do you look at the time for?”
“Well,” she replied, “I promised Claude I’d show him a new step to-night; but he’s not coming till half-past nine. We’ve got nearly a whole hour.”
“Let’s go on talking about marriage,” she said, drawing her chair closer. “Why should I marry? Every girl doesn’t. Why should I? Some one in the paper said only the other day that there are many more women than men and therefore lots of them must be single. Why shouldn’t I be one?”
“If you want to, there’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t,” I said. “But we can’t arrange these things. At any moment you may fall in love, and what then? Marriage has a way of following love.”
“Ye-e-s,” said Rose. “But one needn’t fall in love. Lots of people don’t. You never did—at any rate, if you did, marriage didn’t follow it.”