"If I get engaged to you at all," she replied, "and I'm not sure that I will, it'll be for five years or not at all. You may be willing to take risks, but I'm not. Risks are all right for men ... they can afford to take them ... but women can't. If you don't agree to that, you'll have to give up the idea altogether!"
"Then you'll get engaged to me?"
"No, I didn't say that. I said that if I got engaged to you at all, it would be for five years. I'm not sure that I shall get engaged to you. I don't think I really like you. I think I'd just get tired of saying 'No' to you!..." She could see that his face had become glum, and she hurriedly reassured him. "Yes, I do like you! I like you quite well ... but I'm not going to marry you ... if I ever marry you ... till I'm sure about you!"
They descended from the 'bus and walked towards her club.
"Anyway," he said, "I consider myself engaged to you. And I'll buy you a ring the morrow morning!"
"Indeed, you won't," she said.
"Indeed, I will," he replied. "I'll have it handy for the time you agree to have me!"
"You won't be able to get one until you know the size, and I won't tell you that!..."
They wrangled on the doorstep until it was late, but she would not yield to him. He could consider himself engaged to her if he liked ... she could not prevent him from considering anything he chose to consider ... but she would not consider herself engaged to him nor would she wear a ring until she was sure of her feelings.
He kissed her when they parted, and she did not resist him. It was useless to try to resist an accomplished thing. His childlike insistence both attracted and irritated her. She felt drawn to him because his mind seemed to be so completely centred upon her, and repelled by him because his own wishes appeared to be the only considerations he had. She could not decide whether the love he had for her ... and she believed that he loved her ... was complete devotion or complete selfishness. Love at first sight was a perfectly credible, though unusual thing. It was possible that he had fallen in love with her ... her vanity was pleased by the thought that he had done so ... but she certainly had not fallen in love with him either at first or at second sight. She was not in love with him now. She felt certain of that. He was likeable and kind and a very comforting person, and there was much more pleasure to be had from a walk with him than from an evening spent in the club!... Ugh, that club, that dreadful conglomeration of isolated women! Oh, oh, oh! She gave little shudders as she reflected on her club-mates. Most of them were girls like herself, working as secretaries either in offices or in other places ... to medical men or writers ... and, like her, they had few friends in London. Their homes were in the country. Among them were a number of aimless spinsters, subsisting sparely on private means ... poor, wilting women without occupation or interest. They were of an earlier generation than Eleanor, the generation which was too genteel to work for its living, and they had survived their friends and their families and were left high and dry, without any obvious excuse for existing, among young women who were profoundly contemptuous of a woman who could not earn a living for herself. They sat about in the drawing-room and sizzled! They knew exactly at what hour this girl came in on Monday night, and at exactly what hour the other girl came in on Tuesday night. They whispered things to each other! They thought it was very peculiar behaviour for a girl to come back to the club alone with a man at twelve o'clock ... "midnight, my dear!" they would say, as if "midnight" had a more terrible sound than twelve o'clock ... and they were certain that Miss Dilldall's parents should be informed of the fact that on Saturday evening she went off in a taxi-cab with a man who was wearing dress-clothes and a gibus-hat. Miss Dilldall publicly boasted of the fact that she had smoked a cigarette in a restaurant in Soho!...