"Ah, that means that she has announced a determination not to marry at all."
"Yes. We are both so much to her that she cannot marry either."
The doctor smothered a smile—not at Stapledon's speech, but before the monumental sternness with which he uttered it.
"How characteristic!"
"Against that, however, I have the assurance that she does not know her own mind. Women, I think, if I may say so without disrespect and upon slight experience, are very contradictory. Miss Endicott has not been in the habit of analysing her emotions. Not that she is not lucidity itself. But—well, if he were here and I—if I were out of the way—I only want her happiness. It seems to lie there. He must come back to her. I can't say all I feel about this, but you understand."
"You're set on her happiness. Very altruistic and all the rest; but I'm afraid she's not built for it. To get happiness into her life will be difficult. Too humorous to be happy, don't you think? Omar al Khattab remarks, very wisely, that four things come not back to man or woman. They are the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. She sent Yeoland about his business. Now there is a sort of love that won't brook cruelty of that pattern."
"Cruelty's too big a word for it. She called it a lover's quarrel herself. Eliminate me, and judge whether the spoken word might not be retrieved and forgotten if he came back to her again."
"Of course improbability's the only certainty with a woman. Don't fancy I'm letting my own interest stand in the way. I, too, in common with all human clay, contain the germ of the heroical. I'll tell Christo everything; that he still has half—is it half or a lesser or greater fraction?—of Miss Honor Endicott's heart. Here we are—three able-bodied men: you, Christo, and myself. Well, surely with a little expenditure of brain tissue we can—eh? Of course. One of you chaps is the obstacle to the other. You pull her heart different ways. She is suspended between your negative and positive attractions like a celestial body, or a donkey between two bundles of hay. So you both go free. Now, if one of you heroes could only find comfort in another woman such a circumstance might determine—you follow me?"
"Her happiness?"
"Not so much her happiness as her destination. Well, I'll urge upon Yeoland the advisability of coming home; I'll tell him how things stand, and of course keep you out of it."