“Oh, pretty well.” She let herself be drawn down on the hall window seat at the top of the landing. “You see, Edith really feels dreadfully, poor girl.”
“What about?”
“Herbert, she isn’t really sure that she loves him.”
“Isn’t sure! After they’ve been engaged for a year!”
“That’s just it. She says if they had been married out of hand, in the first flush of the novelty, she wouldn’t have had time, perhaps, to have any doubts. But it’s the seeing him all the time that’s made her think.”
“Made her think what?”
“Whether she loves him or not; whether they are really suited. I remember that I used to feel that way about you, dear. Oh, you know, Herbert, it’s a very serious thing for a girl. She says she knows her whole life is at stake; she thinks about it all the time.”
“How about his?”
“Well, that’s what I said,” admitted Mrs. Belmore. “She says that she feels that he is so rational and self-poised that she makes little difference in his life either way—it has come to her all at once. She says his looking at everything in a matter-of-fact way just chills her; she longs for a whole-souled enthusiasm that can sweep everything before it. She feels that if they are married she will have to keep up the ideal for both of them, and she doesn’t know whether she can.”
“No, she can’t,” said Mr. Belmore.