“Oh, no, I can’t say that.”
“Then take the plunge. I will answer for the rest. You won’t love me before you marry me. I feel sure of that. I am equally sure that you will love me after. And all the differences from your traditional man—they will transpose themselves into commonplaces when they have become the familiar details of daily life.”
“But English women never marry American men,” I exclaimed, grasping wildly at a straw. “It always is the other way.”
“There lies your chance for fame,” he said more lightly than one would expect from his face. “You are already the most delightfully original of women. Don’t do anything so commonplace as to go home, after having all your blood made over by the Adirondack air, and marry a great landlord with a rent-roll and six titles. Fancy the stimulation of watching a determined American throttling a fortune out of his chaotic country, helping him in his ambitious career, rising with him step by step until he is head and shoulders above the seventy struggling millions of the United States of America. Does not the prospect please you? You see I am practical. I hate self-control. I know very little about it. But I dare not be lover-like, not the least bit, till you give me permission.”
“Oh, please don’t! Yes, the life would be interesting. But I adore politics. Would you throw over that Trust and go in heart and soul for reform, with the ultimate intention of being a distinguished statesman?”
“Yes—but it would mean a curtailed income.”
“I have quantities of money—it would be rather an original international match, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would. And while you could expend your entire income on dress and jewels if you chose, you would have to make up your mind to live according to my income.”
“Oh!”
“I should be a failure if I settled down to live on a woman’s money at my age—forty-one—; moreover my divorce from the interests of capitalism would be deprived of its point. It would be the sacrifice that would tell most in the beginning. No native of the British Isles would be accused of the disinterestedness of marrying an unwealthy American when protected by a rent-roll. Nobody would suspect your income.”