"I recollect it," she admitted. "Every moment, and every step, and every word. It will always be something good for me to look back upon, when I'm older."
He bent down to her. "We'll look back upon it together," he said affectionately.
"No!"
The official to whom Henry had been speaking begged pardon for interrupting; the train, he announced, would be about five minutes late. Gertie thanked him with a glance that, at any honestly managed exchange office, could be converted into bank notes.
"Has your view of me altered, then?" he asked.
"My view of you," she replied steadily, "is exactly the same that it always has been, ever since I first met you. I like you better—oh, a lot better—than any one else in the world, and I know that if you married me you'd do all you could to make me happy and comfortable. But I shouldn't be happy and comfortable. I've got to look forward; and when I do that, there's no use in shutting my eyes. I can see quite clearly what would happen. You'd have this large house down in the country, and you would ask friends there, and I should make blunders, and, sooner or later, you'd be certain to feel ashamed of me."
"I don't agree, dear," he said with emphasis. "Anyhow let us try the experiment. I am sure you overestimate the distance between us. Think how well we used to get along together."
"If life was all summer evenings and Primrose Hill," she remarked, "I might stand a chance. But it isn't. Your life is going to be that of a country gentleman in Berkshire; my life is going to be that of a well-paid worker in Great Titchfield Street."
"Wish I could find some method," he cried vehemently, "of giving events a twist. I'd much rather go on in my own profession. I'm making my way slowly, but I'm making it for myself, and I—I want you for company." He gave a gesture of appeal. "Can't you see how much it means?"
"We've got to take matters as they are, and not as we should like them to be. And it isn't as though I'd only got myself to think about. There's you. If I didn't care so much for you, it might be different."