Clive shook his head. “He would know better than that. He would know that what she really needed was Chicago, and friends, and work, and adventure....”
Felix reflected that Clive could have offered her all these things....
“And what happened?” asked Rose-Ann.
“He couldn’t persuade her to take the plunge into life in Chicago without some kind of preparation.... She’s terribly afraid of Chicago.... So she’s worked out a solution of her own. She’s gone off to a normal school, to learn to be a school-teacher; and get a job in Chicago that way.... Worse than that—she’s going to teach somewhere else first, for some damned reason, and later go to Chicago. I tell her, yes, when she’s forty, she’ll be ready to begin life!”
“So that,” Felix said, “was what was troubling you all winter. I thought you were trying to get some girl to marry you; and you were merely trying to get her to go to Chicago and get a job!”
“Am I to be given no credit for the disinterested and unselfish character of my worrying?” Clive asked gaily.
“I don’t imagine the girl gives you much credit for it,” said Felix. “Why don’t you marry her and be done with it?”
“Good heavens!” said Clive. “Must one marry a girl because he has talked to her about Bernard Shaw?”
“Must St. George marry the girl he has rescued from the dragon?” Felix retorted. “I only know it always happens in the story-books that way.”
“A fine realist you are, young man! Fortunately, there are other St. Georges in the world.—Why this sudden passion of matrimonial propaganda? Misery loves company?”