But there was no response in her set face. She had sat down with her back to him, on the chair by the toilet-table, and was playing with the lid of a little ivory box. Never before had she looked like this; for the face he saw in the mirror was set in an inexplicable anger, a deep and almost venomous anger which amazed him; and he had a curious feeling that this Virginia’s spine was made of steel, it would bend and bend and bend until one day it snapped up straight and stayed straight, rigid and unyielding. He felt, as it were psychically that there were wastes in this Virginia unexplored by man, wastes where she roamed in utter disregard of human laws, wastes where she could wander untrammelled by human emotions. Give her an inch of excuse, and she would become a snake, to swish away with implacable and unfathomable face. American women were said to get like that when angered, hard. He knew, quite dearly, that she wasn’t now angry at what he had said, but that her whole nature had been given a twist to anger at some hidden aspect of him.
“Well?” he asked softly, from behind her. She had humoured him often, after all....
She turned her head and looked directly at him.
“I’ve got nothing to say,” she said steadily. “You say that I haven’t wanted to discuss what we are going to do. Having discovered that I don’t want to, I’m merely wondering why you are insisting on it—that’s all.”
He laughed a little at that.
“Don’t try to bully me, Virginia, and I’ll not try to bully you,” he warned her. “You see, dear, I think we ought to discuss it, whether you want to or not. It’s really rather important—and you can’t just get out of it by looking like an angry queen and saying, ‘I have nothing to say.’ I’m in love with you, Virginia, and not with love, so I want us to be sane about it. There’s a great deal more pleasure in sanity than people think—for, you know, one doesn’t have to be mad because one is in love....” And then, from behind, he bent down and gently tilted up her chin with his hand and kissed her lips; and, surprisingly, they held to his lips!
“Is that the way sanity takes you?” she asked.
“It was a proposal of marriage,” he said gravely. It was the first time that word had occurred between them; but it had occurred within them for now two weeks. Virginia stared at him seriously, and her hand gently brushed his forehead, a very fond gesture. The curious anger in her had died as suddenly as it had come.
“That’s what I was being angry about,” she explained. “And that’s why I’ve made you avoid the subject these glorious two weeks, these lovers’ weeks. I don’t think I want to marry you, Ivor. In fact, I don’t think any woman has ever wanted to marry you.”
“I’ve only asked one,” he told her darkly. “But I’m afraid you will have to marry me, Virginia. Things seem to point that way. I am not philandering with you, I’d have you know. I have finished with philandering. It doesn’t matter a button to me if we are married or not, and I’ve no one in the world to consider but you—but marriage seems to be indicated, for several weighty reasons which I will explain to you if you’ll cease laughing at me.”