"How could one take them all?" said Stella. "I have to risk your pride, and you have to risk my regret. As a matter of fact, your pride is more of a certainty than a risk, and my regret is a wholly imaginary idea, founded upon your ignorance of my character. Still, I'm willing to put it like that to please you. You have every right to sacrifice yourself to your own theories, but what about sacrificing me? I give you no such right."
For the first time Julian saw what loving Stella would be like; he would never be able to get to the end of it. Marriage would be only the beginning. She had given him her heart without an effort, and he found that she was as inaccessible as ever. His soul leaped toward this new, unconquerable citadel. He held himself in hand with a great effort.
"What you don't realize," he said, "is that our knowledge of life is not equal. If I take you at your word, you will make discoveries which it will be too late for you to act upon. You cannot wish me to do what is not fair to you."
"I want my life to be with you," said Stella. "Whatever discoveries I make, I shall not want them to be anywhere else. You do not understand, but if you send me away, you will take from me the future which we might have used together. You will not be giving me anything in its place but disappointment and utter uselessness. You'll make me—morally—a cripple. Do you still wish me to go away from you?"
Julian winced as if she had struck him.
"No, I'll marry you," he said; "but you've made me furiously angry. Please go home by yourself. I wonder you dare use such an illustration to me."
Stella slipped over the verge of the hollow. She, too, wondered how she had dared; but she knew quite well that if she hadn't dared, Julian would have sent her away.
CHAPTER XXIV
Stella was afraid that when she went down to dinner it would be like slipping into another life—a life to which she was attached by her love for Julian, but to which she did not belong. It did not seem possible to her that Lady Verny would be able to bear her as a daughter-in-law. As a secretary it had not mattered in the least that she was shabby and socially ineffective. And she couldn't be different; they'd have to take her like that if they took her at all. She ranged them together in her fear of their stateliness; she almost wished that they wouldn't take her at all, but let her slink back to Redcliffe Square and bury herself in her own insignificance.