Bobby protested. “You don’t love me?”
“Haven’t I kissed you? Didn’t I hug you? Haven’t I ruffled your hair?”
“Then why don’t you want to marry me?”
“I do not want to marry anyone. I don’t love anybody. Except of course you. But even you, I can’t marry. I want to be loved, Bobby, yes. But not to be married.”
“But why? Not the—the old reason?”
“No. I took your word about that. But all the same I don’t want to marry you, Bobby.... I think it’s because I don’t want to be bound up with anyone’s life. I don’t want to be a wife. I want to be my free and independent self. I’ve got to grow. That’s it, Bobby. I want to be free to grow.”
Bobby made protesting noises.
“I don’t want some one seeing me grow all the time. You’d always be looking at me, Bobby; I know you would.”
It was useless of Bobby to say he wouldn’t. He would.
“I didn’t know that things were going to take me like this until I fixed to marry you. I wanted to marry you when I consented—honestly I did. I wanted dreadfully then to get close to some one, as close as possible, and to be kissed and told ‘There! There!’ and to keep there. It was a comfort for me, Bobby. You are a comfort for me. I’d ache to madness without you. But how close we come when we love, Bobby, and how far away we are all the time! How can we know each other when we hardly know ourselves? When we don’t dare know ourselves?