"Oh, yes, it is. You'd like to marry what you think is me—what I was, but that's not what I am. I'm only sparing you the pain of discovering too late that I'm an uncomfortable person to have married. To begin with, Godfrey dear, I can't stand Marshington. The Weare Grange is a heavenly place, and Delia tells me that there are prospects of regeneration for Marshington. She believes that the Twentieth Century Reform League is going to remedy its faults. I don't know. It may do. But not for me. It's cost me too much. I'm too near the shadow of its influence. I should slip back to it."
"But why——?"
"Why shouldn't it? Because I'm—myself, that's all. I found that out in London. I've actually got tastes and inclinations and a personality. And they're all things that you would disapprove of immensely. Oh, yes, you would. You want a good wife, Godfrey, someone who'd be the hostess of shooting-parties, who'd listen to your hunting stories, and who'd be interested in your tenants. You'd want somebody who would be satisfied by your possessions and by your prestige, and whose goal in life would be to make you comfortable. Clare wouldn't have done that. In one way, it's a pity you didn't marry her. You'd have been miserable, and she'd have broken away, but it might have been better for you. As it is—it's too late, Godfrey. Some day perhaps, I may marry, but it won't be you. I once was in love with you, but I don't love you. Your interests are not my interests—we haven't a taste in common.
"I'm going back to London. I'll go to-morrow. I'm learning there a lot of things and it hasn't done with me yet. Delia mayn't want me always. Probably she's going to America soon anyway. It isn't that. I've got an idea—I don't know how to express it—that I think I've always had in my head somewhere. An idea of service—not just vague and sentimental, but translated into quite practical things. Maybe I'll do nothing with it, but I do know this, that if I married you I'd have to give up every new thing that has made me a person."
"You wouldn't."
"Oh, yes, I would. Can't you just picture us, Godfrey? You, the typical country squire. I, the epitome of all Marshington virtues."
He frowned at her. He was a little sad, a little hurt, a little disappointed. She knew that he was not heart-broken.
"I can't be a good wife until I've learnt to be a person," said Muriel, "and perhaps in the end I'll never be a wife at all. That's very possible. But it doesn't matter. The thing that matters is to take your life into your hands and live it, following the highest vision as you see it. If I married you, I'd simply be following the expedient promptings of my mother and my upbringing. Do you see?"
"I don't see. It's all that London nonsense. It's Delia. It's——"
"No it isn't. It's Muriel—at last. You see, when she's really there, you don't much like her. Godfrey dear, how could we live together? We'd quarrel from the first."