“Please, Dane, I put that very badly. I thought that after the way I’ve talked about marriage you knew I didn’t want to marry anybody, but that you were afraid of the trouble dad and the family might make for me if you did not. What I thought was that you were not considering your own real wishes at all, that you were just being—well, conventionally decent about it. But I see that you never took the things I’ve said about marriage, or a career, or living my own life any more seriously than anybody else has ever done. And the trouble is, that however mad I seem to you and everybody else, I am serious about it.”
“You can be as serious as you like about it,” he said. “I know well enough you’re serious about it. But marrying me will neither kill your career nor stop you living your own life.”
She turned her troubled eyes full upon him.
“You don’t believe me,” he said harshly.
“Please, Dane, oh please,” her voice trembled. But as he sat aloof and made no move to soothe her she controlled herself.
“Will you listen to me if I talk?”
“Yes, of course.”
It was a cold tone, hard to talk against. What she had said to hurt him like that she did not know. But she forced herself to go on.
“I suppose I’m morbid about freedom. I had to fight so for every bit of mine that I’ve swung to the other direction. And you see I heard such rubbish talked about ceremonies, all kinds of ceremonies, christenings, confirmations, weddings, everybody confusing the form with the feeling, or rather taking no account of the feeling at all—and you see the feeling was everything to me, and I came to throw all the forms overboard, all of them, I despise
