At the thought of how difficult it was going to be to bear, not to be able to tell anybody anything, she cried a little. Her face was uncontorted by her tears. They streamed down her blossom-colored cheeks like drops of pearly dew. Julian thought her tears were softness, and he struck at his chance. Now perhaps she would surrender to his hidden hope.
He pleaded, with her head against his heart, that she would marry him, marry him now—at once. He could arrange it all in twenty-four hours. He presented a thousand impetuous arguments. All his wits and his ardor fought for him against her soft, closed eyes. She was his; she would be his forever. He would go with that great possession in his heart; he would go like a man crowned to meet his future.
She opened her eyes at last and moved away from him. At that instant she would have liked to marry him, she would have liked it very much; but besides the fact that she had no things, there loomed the blank uncertainty of the future. Would she be a wife or a widow, and how should she know which she was? There were more immediate difficulties. Her parents were in Scotland; hurried weddings were always very awkward; you couldn't have bridesmaids or wedding presents; and a few hours' honeymoon, with an indefinite parting ahead of it, would be extremely painful.
Even if a marriage under all these disabilities was legal—wouldn't it be worse than illegal—wouldn't it be rather funny?
Julian was sometimes impossible; he had been nearly overwhelming, but he was quite impossible. He might be a dangerous man to marry in a hurry. She would have to train him first.
"It's out of the question, Julian," she said firmly. "The whole future is too uncertain. I should love to—but I can't do it. It wouldn't be right for me to do it. We must wait till you come back."
Julian returned to his study of the short down grasses. He knew that if she had loved to—she would have done it. He had a moment that was bitter with doubt and pain; then his love rose up and swallowed it. He saw the uncertainty for her.
He wanted her now because he knew that he might never have her. He wanted her with the fierce hunger of a pirate for a prize; but the very sharpness of his desire made him see that it was sheer selfishness to press his point. He overlooked the fact that it would have been perfectly useless. No pressure would have changed Marian. Pressure had done what it could for her already: it had moved her to tears. She dried them now, and suggested that they had stayed on the downs long enough.