"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Why should we submit to this old world! Why should we give up—things you have dreamed as well as I! You said once—to hear my voice—calling in the morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. Now! Let us take each other, and"—I still remember my impotent phrase—"afterwards count the cost!"
"If I were a queen," said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen." ...
So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and all she said made me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "At least," I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give me three years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!"
She knew so clearly now the quality of her own intentions.
"Dear Stephen," she explained, "if I were to come away with you and marry you, in just a little time I should cease to be your lover, I should be your squaw. I should have to share your worries and make your coffee—and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in a hundred ways. Think! Should I be any good as a squaw? How can one love when one knows the coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving one's lover indigestion? And I don't want to be your squaw. I don't want that at all. It isn't how I feel for you. I don't want to be your servant and your possession."
"But you will be Justin's—squaw, you are going to marry him!"
"That is all different, Stevenage. Between him and me there will be space, air, dignity, endless servants——"
"But," I choked. "You! He! He will make love to you, Mary."
"You don't understand, Stephen."
"He will make love to you, Mary. Mary! don't you understand? These things—— We've never talked of them.... You will bear him children!"