"That you—love me." His faced whitened. "For my much love is there not even a little, Mary?"
She shook her head, her eyes still upon the rug. Then she looked up. "I never love—a little. For your much love I have— Oh, John, John, don't leave me any more! Don't leave me here alone!"
* * * * *
"I suppose"—she punched the cushion on the sofa beside her into first one shape and then another—"I suppose there must always be something we wish there wasn't. I don't like your world. I don't want to marry in it. It's so queer how things get mixed up and twisted in life. I believe in the old-fashioned things, and do not want that which the men and women of your world want. What would mere externals mean if your heart was not happy, or if one's life was spent on parade with no one to care for you—just for yourself."
"In this particular case"—he smiled in the brilliant, anxious eyes—"there is some one to care for you—just for yourself."
"I know, but—" She drew away. "I can't talk if— You really mustn't, John! I think I'd better sit in that chair."
"I think you hadn't. Go on. But what?"
"I don't like your kind of life. I mean the kind the people you know lead. When I used to visit Geraldine French I was always finding points of likeness in it to my early training. We had to do so many things we didn't want to, just because other people did them. Everything was cut according to a pattern. I don't like rules and regulations. I like Yorkburg. Here love counts."
"Love counts everywhere. Unfortunately, it's the rules and regulations that don't count in many worlds. Custom controls, I admit. But it's because love counts I need you, Mary. All of us get tired of it, the cap and bells, the sham and show, and underneath we know are eternal verities we pretend to forget. Eternal verities don't let you forget. Don't you see what you have done? You have made me understand what life could mean. In what you call my world are many who do not seem to know. There is something very terribly needing to be done there."
"What is there needing to be done?"