III
On the last day of the six months Murchison presented himself before Gina, and without embarrassment, and also without fervor, requested to know his fate. He was greatly displeased with Gina’s conduct on this occasion. She wished to be indefinite;[Pg 75] she wished neither to take him nor to leave him, but to keep him in reserve.
“You know how fond I am of you, Robert,” she said.
“No,” he replied, “I don’t. My question was just, as you might say, to determine that point.”
“Sometimes I think that, on account of the children, I shouldn’t marry again,” she said tentatively.
“That’s for you to say. You ought to know,” he remarked.
“I suppose at my age, I ought!”
He bowed stiffly. There came to Gina the recollection of what Dr. Walters had said. He had assured her that she was like a young girl.
“You’ve never grown up,” he had told her. “You never will.”
“I’m afraid, Robert,” she said, “that I never could make you happy.”