Part 10 (2/2)
He spoke without looking up at her, and his face remained hidden by his hands.
”If I sit down and talk to you quietly, will you promise that you won't begin again?”
”Yes.”
”You give me your word of honour that you won't--won't touch me?”
”Oh, yes,” he said dejectedly, ”I promise.”
”When you began just now, you implied--you accused me as if you thought I had been--encouraging you. But, Mr. Marsden, you must know that such an accusation is unjust and untrue.”
”Is it? I don't think you women much care how you lead people on.”
”But indeed I do care. I should be bitterly ashamed of myself if I was not certain that I had never given you the slightest encouragement.”
”Oh, never mind. What does it matter? I have made a fool of myself--that's all. Love blinds a man to plain facts.”
He had raised his head again, and was looking at her. They sat side by side, and the dusk began to envelope them so that their faces were white and vague.
”At the first,” he went on, ”I could see that it was hopeless. If social position didn't interfere, the money would prove a barrier there'd be no getting round. You are rich, and I am poor. At the first I saw how unhappy it was going to make me. I saw it was hopeless--most of all, because I'm not a man who could consent to pose as the pensioner of a rich wife.... But then I forgot--and I began to hope. Yes, I did really hope.”
”What is it you hoped for?”
”Why, that chance would turn up lucky--that somehow I might be put more on an equality. Or that you would marry me in spite of all--that you'd come to think money isn't everything in this world, and love counts most of all.”
”But, Mr. Marsden, how can I for one moment of time credit you with--with the love you will go on talking about?”
”Haven't I _shown_ it to you?”
”I think--I am quite sure you are deceiving yourself. But nothing can deceive me. You mistake the chivalrous romantic feelings of youth for something far different.”
”No, I don't mistake.”
”The disparity in our years renders such a thing impossible. Between you and me, love--the real love--is out of the question.”
”Yes, you can say that easily--because no doubt it's true on your side.
If you felt for me what I feel for you--then it would be another story.”
”But suppose I had been foolish enough to be taken with you, to let myself be carried away by your eloquence--which I believe was all acting!”
”Acting? That's good--that's devilish good.”
”I say, suppose I had believed you--and yielded one day, don't you know very well that all the world would laugh at me?”
”Why?”
”Why--because, my dear boy, I'm almost old enough to be your mother--and I have done with love, and all that sort of thing.”
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