"I'd want you to be a bit foolish about me, Jerry,—that is, if I make up my mind to it." I had to defend myself against the encouragement he got out of my admission. "But, Jerry, when did you begin to think about—what you've just said?"
"About marrying you? Ever since that time I went down to your place ... when that Chichester girl...."
"When I wouldn't take her place, a pis aller merely. Well, suppose I had; suppose I had been ... what the Chichester girl wouldn't ... would you still have wanted to marry me?" I would not admit to myself why I had asked that question.
"I don't know, Olivia ... men, don't you know, not often ... but I want to marry you now. I want it greatly." I held him off still, trying to get my own experience in shape where I could leave it behind me.
"Such affairs never turn out well, do they?"
"Hardly ever, I believe."
"Unless you turn them into marriage," I hazarded.
"You know," he conjectured, "I've a notion that the kind of loving that goes to making such affairs, can't be turned into marriage very easily. It's a kind of subconscious knowledge of their unfitness that keeps us from turning them into marriage in the first place."
"I wonder."
He let me be for the moment revolving many things in my mind.