“Millie’s going into a new piece. It’s a real play this time. It’s about the stage and there are to be a lot of chorus girls in it. She says she could get me in easily.”
Old Mole took this in silence.
“I won’t go if you don’t like it,” she said.
“Have you said you would go?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Do you want to?”
“What else is there for me to do?”
Indeed, what was there? He was saddened and angry at the use of the argument. He had wanted her to feel free, to come and to go, so long only as she treated him with frankness, and here he had so far failed that she had made arrangements to return to the theater and then asked for his post facto consent. What was it that kept her in awe of him? Not his thoughts of her, nor his feeling for her, so far as he knew either. . . . He kissed her good night and sat sadly brooding over it all: but it was too difficult for him, and he was tired and his humor would not come to his aid. He sought refuge in books, but they yielded him none, and at last Panoukian’s phrase recurred to him:
“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps I am a Harbottler in marriage, nibbling at love. God help me if I am.”