The High Street pavement is too narrow and crowded for conversation and we were some way westward before we spoke again.
“Look here,” I said; “I want you, Marion. Don’t you understand? I want you.”
“Now!” she cried warningly.
I do not know if the reader will understand how a passionate lover, an immense admiration and desire, can be shot with a gleam of positive hatred. Such a gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of that “Now!” It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no warning in it of the antagonisms latent between us.
“Marion,” I said, “this isn’t a trifling matter to me. I love you; I would die to get you.... Don’t you care?”
“But what is the good?”
“You don’t care,” I cried. “You don’t care a rap!”
“You know I care,” she answered. “If I didn’t—If I didn’t like you very much, should I let you come and meet me—go about with you?”
“Well then,” I said, “promise to marry me!”
“If I do, what difference will it make?”