“Oh——Ah——” Pelham found himself stuttering. “It will be a unique wedding and nothing else would be appropriate for you. . . . Do you know?” he burst out irrepressibly, “I believe I should have fallen in love with you tonight if you hadn’t already been bespoken—and by my best friend. . . .”
“What nonsense!” Gita almost shrieked. “I hate that sort of nonsense! And I should have hated you if you had.”
“But surely you must be used to it by this time. Wouldn’t it be more truthful to say it merely bored you?”
“No, it wouldn’t. Men don’t fall in love with me. I don’t permit it.”
“Eustace seems to have succeeded. Or did you——”
“Eustace isn’t the kind that falls in love any more than I am. We’re wonderful friends, and as we couldn’t be together constantly without being annoyed in many ways, we decided to make the stupid concession and go through the ceremony.”
“Oh—I see.” He was staring down at his cigarette, which threatened to fall to the rug. “But—just suppose either of you should fall in love with someone else?”
Gita’s tones were heavy with scorn. “Eustace has never been in love in his life and never could be. As for myself, whatever I might have been, life made me into something quite different, and the very word makes me sick.”
“Ah—you’re a pathological case. I see. But pathological cases may sometimes be cured.”
“Not when they don’t want to be. I thank heaven I shall be free all my life, not a slave.”