"Never have done!" he repeated, with an accent full of grieved resentment. "I think it would have done so admirably. I hardly understand——"
"I mean," said poor Mary helplessly, "that you estimated me wrongly.
I am frivolous—your interests would not have been safe in my hands.
You would have married me on a misunderstanding."
"No," said Charles morosely, "I can't believe that! You are not plain with me, you are not sincere. You don't really believe that you are frivolous, that we should not suit. In what way am I so impossible? Is it my politics that you object to? I shall be happy to discuss them with you. I am not intolerant; I should not expect you to agree with me in everything. You give me no reasons for this—this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; you indulge in generalizations."
He spoke in a constrained monotone, which seemed to Mary, in spite of her genuine regret for the pain she gave him, unreasonably full of reproach.
"Ah!" she cried sharply, "since I don't love you, is not that a reason? Oh, believe me," she went on rather wearily, "I have no prejudice, not a grain. I would sooner marry you than not. Only I cannot bring myself to feel towards you as a woman ought to the man she marries. Very likely I shall never marry."
He considered her, half angrily, in silence, with his unanimated eyes; his dignity suffered in discomposure, and lacking this, pretentious as it was, he seemed to lack everything, becoming unimportant and absurd.
"Oh, you will marry!" he said at last sullenly, an assertion which
Mary did not trouble to refute.
He returned the next minute, with a persistency which the girl began to find irritating, to his charge.
"I don't understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your reasons; it's perverse—yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not really happy here; the life doesn't suit you."
"What a discovery!" cried the girl half mockingly. "I am not really happy! Well, if I admit it?"