“You insist on waiting?”
“We can’t take any risk, Ivy,” he sighed.
She pushed him gently into a chair and knelt on the floor by his side, resting her face on her hands and looking at him with an adoration which seemed still too great for her to comprehend.
“My darling, do you think I don’t love you more and more every day?,” she asked. “I don’t want to wait. Sometimes I grow frightened, Eric; I wonder if you’ll repent... I know you love me, or you wouldn’t have done what you have done—”
“But you wouldn’t be a woman, if you didn’t want me to tell you at short intervals that I still loved you. I’m trying to get a cool judgement from you.”
“And I don’t want to be cool or temperate or sensible. I... I want not to be frightened again, Eric.”
Her eyes, wistful with discouragement, filled with tears and fell until he could see the long lashes black against her cheeks. Since their return from Maidenhead, she had never complained; and Eric was in danger of forgetting that she had anything to fear. Putting his arm round her waist, he lifted her on to the arm of the chair.
“You’ve nothing to be afraid of, Ivy,” he whispered, stroking her short black hair until she grew calm at his touch. “I shouldn’t go back on my promise, even if I wanted to. And it happens that I don’t want to.”
“But you do love me, Eric? I’ve been thinking—quite a lot and quite cold-bloodedly. I can’t take what you’re offering, unless you love me. It would be too much, I should have no right... If I did anything, after this, to make you wretched... And I shouldn’t take it.... You said you’d marry me in spite of everything, but I sometimes think you’re marrying me because of everything, because I’ve made such a mess of my life, because you were divinely sorry for me. But do you love me apart from that? If I told you that the whole thing was a dream—”
“I should call it a device of destiny for bringing us together...” He stopped abruptly, afraid to trust his voice, as her eyes lit up. “And, by the same test, if that were only a dream, would you want to marry me?,” he continued.