“I won’t marry you with the forms of marriage,” Rhoda answered in an abrupt, harsh tone.
“Now it is you who play with a serious matter.”
“You said we had both changed. I see now that our “perfect day” was marred by my weakness at the end. If you wish to go back in imagination to that summer night, restore everything, only let me be what I now am.”
Everard shook his head.
“Impossible. It must be then or now for both of us.”
“Legal marriage,” she said, glancing at him, “has acquired some new sanction for you since then?”
“On the whole, perhaps it has.”
“Naturally. But I shall never marry, so we will speak no more of it.”
As if finally dismissing the subject she walked to the opposite side of the hearth, and there turned towards her companion with a cold smile.
“In other words, then, you have ceased to love me?”