“Even when I knew you were not happy. I’d given up all hope. I had almost made myself believe I was content with your platonic affection.”
She laughed a little mischievously.
“Shall I take my love back? Ah, no! I couldn’t. It’s been out of my keeping so long. Yes, it’s true, Colin.” She blushed hotly. “I will be honest. I have felt passion for two other men, Gilbert—I thought that was passion born of love—and another. But the best part of me has always mated with you, always loved you. And yet I didn’t discover it until I thought you were going to marry Pat.”
The word marry sobered both of them a little, but did not detract from their happiness.
“Colin,” she said gently, “why did you let me marry Gilbert? I asked you once before in a different form. I think—I am almost sure, I was ripe for love in those old days when we used to poke round picture-galleries and book-shops together. I was always perfectly happy with you. Didn’t that mean love? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My dear, I wanted to give you plenty of time. Perhaps it was a mistake, but I felt it was your due. You were so young, so beautiful, such a success in Society, that I wanted you to have every chance. I’m nothing in particular, and I didn’t feel it was fair to press my suit until you’d got to know what the world and men were like. You see, you were always a little romantic, idealistic, enthusiastic, and such women as you are difficult to woo fairly. One is afraid to take advantage of you. Because we were good chums didn’t necessarily mean that you could be happy with me as a husband.”
“And yet isn’t friendship, comradeship, the best foundation for marriage?”
“Some people say yes, some say no. I suppose one can’t generalize. It depends on temperament, age, experience, many things. I adored you, but that was natural. There were any amount of men who adored you. I thought I knew those you were at all likely to marry. Oh! I watched carefully, sometimes agonizedly. And then, as you turned them down one by one, I began to hope.... Your engagement to Gilbert came as a bomb-shell. Gilbert, my old college friend! Why, I was hardly aware you knew him, except that you had been neighbours as children.”
“I didn’t.... He just carried me off my feet. I can’t think, even now, how it happened ... a sort of intoxication—youth, music, passion. In those days he was very much the male animal, and you see ... it was the flourish of trumpets ... I was deafened ... I thought it was the real thing, just because I was moved. When will women learn that the men who move them physically are not always the men they really love? No one can say I was brought up ignorantly; there were certain broad-minded, lax ideas I grew up with side by side, but I didn’t know. I thought it was love, because I liked the feeling of his arms around me. The two things are so horribly alike at crucial moments. If only they were differently dressed!”
“I know.... I never moved you that way.”