‘I was very much surprised at the way you wrote,’ he said.
‘How do you mean, surprised, Roddy?’ she said timidly.
She had known all along in the deepest layer of her consciousness that something like this would happen. Permanent happiness had never been for her.
It was not much of a shock. In a moment that night was a far, unreal memory.
‘Well’—he hesitated. ‘If a man wants to ask a girl to—marry him he generally asks her himself—do you see?’
‘You mean—it was outrageous of me not to wait—to write like that?’
‘I thought it a little odd.’
‘Oh, but Roddy, surely—surely that’s one of those worn-out conventions.... Surely a woman has a perfect right to say she—loves a man—if she wants to—it’s simply a question of having the courage.... I can’t see why not.... I’ve always believed one should....’
It was no good trying to expostulate, to bluff like that, with his dead face confronting her. He would not be taken in by any such lying gallantries. How did one combat people whose features never gave way by so much as a quiver? She leaned against the wooden fence and tried to fix her eyes upon the may-tree opposite. Very far, but clear, she heard her mother at the other end of the garden, calling her name: but that was another Judith.
‘I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me,’ he said.