He looked nonplussed.
"Well, they'd go to theatres and dances, and play cards, and things like that," he explained vaguely. "I don't know much about women, but I do know that not many of them stay at home as much as you do."
She sat silent for a moment, then she said: "You mean that it would please you if—if I was more like other women?"
He laughed apologetically. "Well, I should feel happier about you," he admitted awkwardly. "It's not natural for a girl of your age to stick at home so much. Time enough in another thirty years."
"Yes." Marie remembered with a little ache the kindly warning which Feathers had several times tried to give her.
"Chris wants a woman who can be a pal to him—to go in for things that he likes—and you could, if you chose to try!" He had said just those words to her many times, and though in her heart she had always known that the first part of them was true, she felt herself utterly incapable of following his advice.
If she had loved Chris less it would have been far easier for her, but as it was, she was always fearful of annoying him, or of wearying him with her attempts to be what he wanted.
"There's no need to stay in town all the autumn, either," Chris went on, after a moment. "Why not go down to the country, or to somewhere you've never been? There must be heaps of places you know nothing about, Marie Celeste."
"Why, I've never been anywhere, except to school in France, and to Brighton or Bournemouth for summer holidays."