The train rattled on and he groped for a third cigarette. Lydia remained silent.
“I haven’t offended you?” he ventured at length, in the tone of a man who feels his way.
She shook her head with a sigh. “I thought you understood,” she moaned. Their eyes met and she moved back to his side.
“Do you want to know how not to offend me? By taking it for granted, once for all, that you’ve said your say on this odious question and that I’ve said mine, and that we stand just where we did this morning before that--that hateful paper came to spoil everything between us!”
“To spoil everything between us? What on earth do you mean? Aren’t you glad to be free?”
“But I don’t _want_ to marry you!” she cried.
She saw that he turned pale. “I’m obtuse, I suppose,” he said slowly. “I confess I don’t see what you’re driving at. Are you tired of the whole business? Or was _I_ simply a--an excuse for getting away? Perhaps you didn’t care to travel alone? Was that it? And now you want to chuck me?” His voice had grown harsh. “You owe me a straight answer, you know; don’t be tender-hearted!”
Her eyes swam as she leaned to him. “Don’t you see it’s because I care--because I care so much? Oh, Ralph! Can’t you see how it would humiliate me? Try to feel it as a woman would! Don’t you see the misery of being made your wife in this way? If I’d known you as a girl--that would have been a real marriage! But now--this vulgar fraud upon society--and upon a society we despised and laughed at--this sneaking back into a position that we’ve voluntarily forfeited: don’t you see what a cheap compromise it is? We neither of us believe in the abstract ‘sacredness’ of marriage; we both know that no ceremony is needed to consecrate our love for each other; what object can we have in marrying, except the secret fear of each that the other may escape, or the secret longing to work our way back gradually--oh, very gradually--into the esteem of the people whose conventional morality we have always ridiculed and hated? And the very fact that, after a decent interval, these same people would come and dine with us--the women who talk about the indissolubility of marriage, and who would let me die in a gutter to-day because I am ‘leading a life of sin’--doesn’t that disgust you more than their turning their backs on us now? I can stand being cut by them, but I couldn’t stand their coming to call and asking what I meant to do about visiting that unfortunate Mrs. So-and-so!”