“I’ve been wondering again—why you don’t marry Dorothy.”
When Amory had said this same thing before, Cosimo had laughed, and with beautiful tact had replied that Dorothy would never have married him: but there was something of the still, of the rapt, about Amory that morning that would have made a laugh an offence. Instead, he said, almost reproachfully, “Oh,—Amory!”
“Why don’t you?” she continued dreamily. “I hope it’s not that mere settling down of opinion that is fatal to real vitality of thought. An idée fixe isn’t an idée at all; it’s a Law that in course of time thoughts become petrified. Then they’ve got to be got fluid again. Are you sure that you haven’t got Dorothy wrongly classified?”
She looked earnestly at him.
“But——” he began, but Amory interrupted him gently.
“Let’s face the facts about Dorothy without prejudice,” she said. “First, I know she’s mixed up with perfectly impossible people, but you mustn’t forget that she was with us at the McGrath. Her work’s impossible too, poor dear Dot, but search where you will, Cosimo, you won’t find a better appreciator than she is. It would only need a little encouragement of that side of her nature and a little suppression of the other and Dorothy would be an almost ideal wife for an advanced and fine-thinking man. It’s merely her Environment that doesn’t give her a chance. Of course, from the point of view of Eugenics, those people of hers may be a little epuisées; intermarried too much: but she doesn’t show it—she may be a throw-back. And it isn’t a drawback any longer that Dorothy’s rather fond of her own way. Equality of Opportunity is admitted nowadays, and in another ten years the conception of woman as property will be quite dead. And think how much worse you might do, Cosimo! Suppose you got hold of a mere doll!... Cosimo,” she added earnestly, “it would be—hell!”
Cosimo quailed inwardly, nor could he, in the face of Amory’s earnestness, dissemble his quailing with a laugh. “But,” he protested by and by, “I—I don’t want Dorothy, Amory!”
“I only ask you to ask yourself whether that isn’t an idée fixe.”
“I really don’t think it’s an idée fixe,” Cosimo returned, after further examination of it. “And besides, you’ve rather spoiled me for the companionship of—of anybody who comes along——”
“It has been beautiful,” said Amory, with a detached air, “and it will be more beautiful still to look back on. I don’t conceal from you, Cosimo, that quite the most precious and significant part of my life has been shared with you.”