"Yes. I care for you a great deal. More than I have ever cared for anyone, I think. That is, partly, why I won't marry you. The other reason has to do with myself."
"With you?"
"You see, I am not a marrying woman. I don't want to have to put up with someone else's crochets, someone else's demands, someone else's colds in the head. Mother and I suit each other perfectly because we make no demands on each other. If one of us has a cold in the head she retires to her room without fuss and doses her disgusting self until she is fit for human society again. But no husband would do that. He would expect sympathy-even though he brought on the cold himself by pulling off clothes when he grew warm instead of waiting sensibly to get cool-sympathy and attention and feeding. No, Robert. There are a hundred thousand women just panting to look after some man's cold; why pick on me?"
"Because you are that one woman in a hundred thousand, and I love you."
She looked slightly penitent. "I sound flippant, don't I? But what I say is good sound sense."
"But, Marion, it is a lonely life—"
"A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other people's demands."
"— and you will not have your mother for ever."
"Knowing Mother as I do, I have no doubt that she will outlive me with perfect ease. You had better hole out: I see old Colonel Whittaker's four on the horizon."
Automatically he pushed his ball into the hole. "But what will you do?" he asked.