"Julia, you can't have thought! A man without an age! A man, except for you and me, without even a name a week together! A man who says of himself that he's to all intents and purposes a ghost haunting anybody who happens to know anything about him!... Anyway you shan't."
"Shan't I, George?" she asked with a long deep look into my eyes.
"That you shall not."
She too rose and stood before me, one elbow on the mantelpiece. She drew up the walking-skirt an inch or two and pushed at a log with her foot.
"Of course it isn't as if you and I could ever quarrel, George," she said. "There, I'm burning your sister's slipper. I say we can't quarrel, because we're ever so far beyond that. Therefore we can talk quite plainly about anything on earth, or under it, or above it. So now tell me why I mustn't marry Derry."
I thought of the man upstairs, of the spirit-kettle on his table, of why he must be alone when he woke in the morning.
"There are physical reasons, if there weren't any others."
"Of course. He'll get younger. He'll be sixteen. Well, I can be his mother then. But I shall have been his wife."
"For how long?"
She lifted her beautiful shoulders. "What does that matter? I said his wife. Does any bride on her wedding-day ask herself how long it's for? There have been widows who've never even taken breakfast with their husbands."