Twelve

I
I don’t know what the usual reactions are of a man who goes to proposemarriage.

In fiction his throat is dry and his collar feels too tight and he is in a piti-able state of nervousness. I didn’t feel at all like that. Having thought of agood idea I just wanted to get it all settled as soon as possible. I didn’t seeany particular need for embarrassment.

I went along to the Symmingtons’ house about eleven o’clock. I rang thebell and when Rose came, I asked for Miss Megan. It was the knowing lookthat Rose gave me that first made me feel slightly shy.

She put me in the little morning room and whilst waiting there I hopeduneasily that they hadn’t been upsetting Megan.

When the door opened and I wheeled round, I was instantly relieved.

Megan was not looking shy or upset at all. Her head was still like a glossychestnut, and she wore that air of pride and self-respect that she had ac-quired yesterday. She was in her old clothes again but she had managed tomake them look different. It’s wonderful what knowledge of her own at-tractiveness will do for a girl. Megan, I realized suddenly, had grown up.

I suppose I must really have been rather nervous, otherwise I should nothave opened the conversation by saying affectionately, “Hallo, catfish!” Itwas hardly, in the circumstances, a lover-like greeting.

It seemed to suit Megan. She grinned and said, “Hallo!”

“Look here,” I said. “You didn’t get into a row about yesterday, I hope?”

Megan said with assurance, “Oh, no,” and then blinked, and saidvaguely, “Yes, I believe I did. I mean, they said a lot of things and seemedto think it had been very odd—but then you know what people are andwhat fusses they make all about nothing.”

I was relieved to find that shocked disapproval had slipped off Meganlike water off a duck’s back.

“I came round this morning,” I said, “because I’ve a suggestion to make.

You see I like you a lot, and I think you like me—”

“Frightfully,” said Megan with rather disquieting enthusiasm.

“And we get on awfully well together, so I think it would be a good ideaif we got married.”

“Oh,” said Megan.

She looked surprised. Just that. Not startled. Not shocked. Just mildlysurprised.

“You mean you really want to marry me?” she asked with the air of onegetting a thing perfectly clear.

“More than anything in the world,” I said—and I meant it.

“You mean, you’re in love with me?”

“I’m in love with you.”

Her eyes were steady and grave. She said:

“I think you’re the nicest person in the world—but I’m not in love withyou.”

“I’ll make you love me.”

“That wouldn’t do. I don’t want to be made.”

She paused and then said gravely: “I’m not the sort of wife for you. I’mbetter at hating than at loving.”

She said it with a queer intensity.

I said, “Hate doesn’t last. Love does.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s what I believe.”

Again there was a silence. Then I said:

“So it’s ‘No,’ is it?”

“Yes, it’s no.”

“And you don’t encourage me to hope?”

“What would be the good of that?”

“None whatever,” I agreed, “quite redundant, in fact—because I’m goingto hope whether you tell me to or not.”