"Yes. I can't help loving you, any more than I can help loving my country. I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it. If I were a man and England were in the wrong, I'd fight for England just because she's England. Everything makes me feel like that. When Ninian was killed, something went on saying, 'You're English! You mustn't cry! You're English!' And when I look at the trees outside, I feel that they're English, too, and that they're telling me I'm English ... that somehow they're special trees, different from the trees in other countries ... that they've got something that I've got, and that I've got something they've got ... something that a French tree or a German tree hasn't got.... Oh, I know it's silly, but I can't help it ... and when I used to walk about the lanes and fields after Ninian's death ... I felt that the birds and the grass and the ferns and everything were saying 'You're English!' and I wanted to say back to them, 'You're English, too!...' I suppose people feel like that everywhere ... those friends of yours in Ireland must feel like that about Ireland ... and Germans, too!..."
He nodded his head. "It's a madness, this nationality," he said, "but you can't get a cure for it. Even I feel it!"
"Quinny!"
"Yes, Mary!"
There was a nervous note in her voice. She got up, so that she was on her knees, and fingered the lapels of his coat.
"Quinny!" she said again, and he waited for her to proceed. "I ... I want us to get married ... soon! You'll probably go into the Army ... nobody could go on feeling as you do, and not go in ... and I'd like us to ... to have had some time together ... before you go. I don't want to be married to you just ... just a day or two before you go. I ... I want to have lived with you and to ... to have taken care of your house ... with you in it!..."
He folded her in his arms.
"You will, Quinny?" she said.