“We will keep a thousand miles away from them.”
“They have told me I’m not good enough.”
“Like their damned impertinence!” He flushed with anger.
“But I promised this morning that I wouldn’t.”
“You first promised me that you would.”
Again he had her cornered. It was almost the act of a cad to drive her so hard, but he was an elemental who had simply to obey the laws of his being. It seemed madness and damnation to let her go. And yet there were tears in her eyes which he dare not look at. If he saw them he was done.
With a kind of savage joy he felt her weaken a little at the impact of his will. It was a piece of cruelty for which there was no help, a form of bullying he could not avoid.
“The best thing we can do,” he said suddenly, “is to get married at once and then clear off to Canada. Then we shall be beyond the jurisdiction of Bridport House.”
“That old man would never forgive me,” was the simple reply. “It would make the whole thing quite hopeless for everybody.”
He checked the words at the tip of his tongue. She had no right to play for the other side, but there was something in her bearing which shamed him to silence. For the first time he was torn; this immolation of self might be a deeper wisdom; at least he felt thin and shallow in its presence.