“I mean it all. Indeed, it is best.”
“If you will not consent to our marriage taking place as soon as was intended, you don’t at all events wish that everything should be at an end between us?”
“Are things ever at an end in this world?” she said, with a sad little smile. “But I do wish that all should be at an end so far that you—that we should be absolutely free.”
“Am I to go away?” he asked petulantly. It seemed as if in this conversation their usual parts were reversed, and perhaps she read in it a sign that her decision was right. But now she hesitated. For herself she would rather he had gone, but there was Miss Cartwright, there was Bice. She said—
“I don’t see how you can. And as we are always to be friends, there is no need.”
He said no more. He opened the door for her to go in, betook himself to the garden, and was as cross for the rest of the day as it was in his nature to be.