With a determined effort to control myself I said:
"You mean, am I engaged to be married?"
THE LADY: "I mean what I say; are you going to marry Peter?"
MARGOT: "I have never told him I would."
THE LADY (VERY SLOWLY): "Remember, my life is bound up in your answer …"
Her words seemed to burn and I felt a kind of pity for her. She was leaning forward with her eyes fastened on mine and her hands clasped between her knees.
"If you don't love him enough to marry him, why don't you leave him alone?" she said. "Why do you keep him bound to you? Why don't you set him free?"
MARGOT: "He is free to love whom he likes; I don't keep him, but I won't share him."
THE LADY: "You don't love him, but you want to keep him; that is pure selfishness and vanity."
MARGOT: "Not at all! I would give him up to-morrow and have told him so a thousand times, if he would marry; but he is not in a position to marry any one."