‘Good God! This is frightful, Marian. I can’t stand it. Live as you are doing. Let us wait and see.’
‘At the cost of losing you?’
‘I will be faithful to you!’
‘And your voice says you promise it out of pity.’
He had made a pretence of holding his umbrella over her, but Marian turned away and walked to a little distance, and stood beneath the shelter of a great tree, her face averted from him. Moving to follow, he saw that her frame was shaken by soundless sobbing. When his footsteps came close to her, she again looked at him.
‘I know now,’ she said, ‘how foolish it is when they talk of love being unselfish. In what can there be more selfishness? I feel as if I could hold you to your promise at any cost, though you have made me understand that you regard our engagement as your great misfortune. I have felt it for weeks—oh, for months! But I couldn’t say a word that would seem to invite such misery as this. You don’t love me, Jasper, and that’s an end of everything.
I should be shamed if I married you.’
‘Whether I love you or not, I feel as if no sacrifice would be too great that would bring you the happiness you deserve.’
‘Deserve!’ she repeated bitterly. ‘Why do I deserve it? Because I long for it with all my heart and soul? There’s no such thing as deserving. Happiness or misery come to us by fate.’
‘Is it in my power to make you happy?’