"Old boy," she said, suddenly contrite, "I've made you angry, and I've hurt you. I'm sowwy—sorry, I mean! (I'm a bit upset, you see)," she said, smiling disarmingly. "But I can't marry you, really. I couldn't bear to be married at all at present. It seems so—so unnecessary. I don't see what I should get out of it. That's a selfish thing to say, I suppose, but I'll try to explain a girl's point of view to you. You're a terrible child in some respects, so I'll do it quite simply."
She stroked his sleeve in a motherly fashion, and continued:—
"Years ago, my dear, the only way a girl could get her freedom or any male society was by marrying. Now, she gets as much of both as she wants, and if she marries she loses all the freedom and most of the male society. So why should she marry at all?"
Hughie kept silence before this poser. He felt incapable of plunging into the depths of an argument: one has to keep to the surface in discussing these matters with a maiden of twenty.
"So I shan't marry for years, if at all," continued Miss Gaymer, with the air of one propounding an entirely new theory. "Not until I'm getting passée at any rate, and only then if I could find a man whom it wouldn't give me the creeps to think of spending the rest of my life with. Besides, the moment one gets engaged all the other men drop off,—all the nice ones, at any rate,—and that would never do. Don't you think my system is a sensible one?"
"It comes hard on the men," said Hughie.
"Yes, poor dears!" said Miss Gaymer sympathetically. "Still, one man is so tiresome and a lot is so nice!"
With which concise and not unmasterly summary of the marriage question, as viewed through the eyes of the modern maiden, Miss Gaymer turned the conversation into other channels, and the idyll terminated.
Half an hour later they were called into the house, to make ready for a boating expedition.
Joan, with her usual frankness, reverted for a moment before they left the seclusion of the trees to the topic that was uppermost in their minds.