"There is nothing one can get drunk on like music and poetry," said Ishmael slowly. "Pictures one needs to understand before they can intoxicate, and prose can fill and satisfy you, but it's only the other two one can go mad on, and this—"
He pulled her to him, a hand beneath her chin, his other arm round her sturdy, soft little body, and she met his eyes bravely for a moment. Then hers closed, but he still paused before he kissed her.
"Georgie, are you sure?" he asked. "Have you thought over all the drawbacks?"
"Such as—?"
"My brothers … even my son, who will have to come before any we may have…. I don't want any more bad blood over this heritage, Georgie! And I—I'm a good many years older than you—"
"And terribly sot in your ways, as Mrs. Penticost says …" murmured
Georgie. "Ishmael, aren't you going to …?"
Then he did, and Georgie nestled close to him with a sigh of satisfaction. After a little while her indefatigable tongue began again.
"Ishmael, isn't it funny to think it might never have happened? Just suppose I had been actually married to Val instead of only sort of engaged…. I might have been, you know."
"If you didn't care about him," began Ishmael, then stopped, feeling he was a poor advocate of a simple and unmistakable method of loving.
"Well, it's very difficult for a girl," explained Georgie. "Even when I was getting fond of him I knew it wasn't what I'd imagined falling in love to be like, but I thought it might be all I could manage. You see, in real life, the second-best has such a disconcerting habit of coming along first. You know all the time that it is only the second-best, but you think to yourself, 'Suppose the first-best never comes along for me, and I have said No to this, then there'll be nothing but a third-best to fall back on.' That's why so many women marry just not the right man."