“You wouldn’t mind if I called you just Em? That was my mother’s name, and I always liked it.”
“No, don’t call me Em. It’s a name I hate—not on account of your mother, of course ... Moses.”
She couldn’t think why she objected to the name: she had been called Em all her life, but somehow it was connected with the vague far-off memory of the romantic Jason Downes. He had called her Em, and it seemed wrong to let this elderly, fleshy man use the same name. It seemed vaguely sacrilegious to put this second marriage on the same basis as the first. She had loved Jason Downes. She knew it just now more passionately than she had ever known it.
“You understand,” she said, laying one hand gently on his.
“Yes, of course, Emma.”
They were standing now, awkwardly waiting for something, and Moses Slade again suddenly took her in his arms. He pinched her arm, ever so gently—just a little pinch; and then he began at once to make a fool of himself again.
“When shall it be?” he asked. “We must fix a date.”
She hesitated for a moment. “Don’t ask me now. I’m all confused and I’ve had so much to worry me. We mustn’t be hasty and undignified—a man in your position can’t afford to be.”
“We can be married quietly ... any time. No one would know how long I’d been courting you.” Then he suddenly became romantic. “The truth is that I’ve wanted to marry you ever since that day you came to see me. So it’s been a long time, you see.”
For a moment she was silent and thoughtful. At last she said, “There’s one thing we ought to consider, Moses. I don’t know about such things, but you’ll know, being a lawyer. It’s about my first husband. You see they never found his body out there in China. They only know he disappeared and must have been killed by bandits. Now what I mean is this ... he mightn’t be dead at all. He might have lost his mind or his memory. And if he turned up....”