He helped her into the punt and began paddling up stream in search of a quiet place for mooring. Half-an-hour passed before he noticed that he was talking only about himself and his boyhood, his family and his work; then he stopped self-consciously, and Ivy looked up eagerly, waiting for him to go on.
“I envy you! I’d give anything to be you!,” she exclaimed. “When I think of my life... and yours....”
Eric smiled and headed for the bank, where he made fast to an obtruding willow-root. Then he stepped into the middle of the punt, rearranged the cushions at Ivy’s back and sat beside her.
“Comfortable?,” he asked her. “Ivy... I want you to think over what I’m going to say, take your time and tell me what you make of it when you’ve thought it over from every point of view for, say, a month.” He lighted a cigarette and looked straight ahead of him. “I want to know whether you’ll marry me.” She sat up, rigid with amazement, looking at him with round eyes. He laid a hand on her shoulder and pressed her gently back. “I’ve saved a fair amount of money and I’m making a good income; one hopes it will go on. I would do all I could to make you happy... Before you decide, you must try to imagine whether I’m the sort of person that you think you could live with. I’m not a professional invalid, but I have to lead rather a careful life and I suppose I’ve as many angles as most bachelors....”
When she tried to speak, he had stopped her; but he found it impossible to go on cataloguing himself while she sat silent with bitten, bloodless lips.
“But... I thought you understood!,” Ivy broke in, as he paused. “I’m not fit... You... or anybody.”
Eric could not trust himself to look at her, but he felt for her hand.
“I’m not asking you to—yet awhile,” he said. “But, when you’ve had time to think it over... Anything that you’ve told me, I—I’ve forgotten. In your turn, you’ll have to take me as you find me... I’m a solitary man... I should like some one to take care of... Will you think this over, Ivy, very slowly and very carefully? It’s a big risk... If you say ‘no’—” he hesitated and shrugged his shoulders. The doubts of the morning had melted like snow beneath a tropic sun; he had recovered the mood of overnight in which pity fiercer than desire set before his eyes the picture of Ivy, praying in wild despair, and filled his ears with the fancied mutter of her prayers. If she said “no,” he would be tempted to plead and argue against her decision and his own better judgement; he hoped that he might not be tempted—“if you say ‘no’”—he hesitated again and moistened his lips—“I can make certain arrangements that will spare you the worst; if you say ‘yes’, I propose that we get married very quietly and go abroad for a time. What matters now is that you should feel comfortable in mind; there’s nothing in the world for you to worry about.”
He withdrew his hand and shaded his eyes to look at the leisurely procession of boats converging at the gate of Boulter’s Lock. Now that he had laid his proposal before her, he seemed cold and repellent where he had meant to make a single, irresistible gesture of magnanimity; it was only by giving her everything and by spending himself to give her more that he could heal the wounds in his own spirit. Ivy’s world must be the fairy palace of a dream....
As the silence lengthened, he wondered whether he wanted her to say anything yet... The announcement would create a sensation. Many would be disappointed, a few pleased by the surface of romance; his mother would look at the slim, dark, undeveloped child and wonder whether he had been captivated by her youthful prettiness and whether such inexperience could possibly make him happy; he wondered in his turn whether a mother’s uncanny intuition would discover that he was not marrying for love. Ivy, for that matter, would not be marrying for love; she would be marrying, at nineteen, for safety. Even if she had loved him now, in ten years’ time she would be a different woman, capable of a different love; if she were assailed later by a passion to which she could not now pretend, he wondered how far gratitude would restrain her....