“I think your talk’s about as good as I could have, Ann.”
Her face lighted up.
“Is it? I am glad. Ooh! It is nice to have you call me that. D’you know, I couldn’t stop thinking of you all day long. And it didn’t stop me working neither. I did best day I’ve done for a long time.”
“And all day long I looked out of the window.”
[III
MR. MARTIN]
The innocencie that is in me is a kinde of simple-plaine innocencie without vigor or art.
THE next morning brought a letter from Professor Smallman:
“MY DEAR FOURMY,—My first impulse was to come down and implore you to return, to think of your career, or, if you are incapable of doing that, of us, to whom your career and, I may say, your happiness, are things of some moment. Linda forbade me to do that. She is well, but shows signs of strain. Frankly, I can understand neither of you. Bitterness, grievances keep men and women apart, but neither of these is in her. She alarms me. She seems to me to be grappling with an emotional situation with her intellect. That seems to me to be dangerous. She said of you: ‘His intellect only comes into play when he is emotionally sure,’ and gave me that, which I do not pretend to understand, as a reason for letting you go your way. I cannot do that without protest. She says: ‘Men and women have the right to adjust their own difficulties and repair their own mistakes without reference to outside opinion, or, indeed, outside affection.’ I cannot agree. My feeling is all against it. When a man and woman marry, they create a social entity which they are not entitled to destroy without consulting society. That is putting it at its very lowest, without thinking for a moment of the spiritual entity which marriage creates. You two seem to have agreed to disregard that——”