If I did say anything, it was three times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could you.  But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then I, remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to scorn, said something to that effect, you know.  I once was in company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at him on that ground as a sort of monster.  And can you guess what the constancy meant?  Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and she repulsed him.  ‘And in the meantime, how many?’ I had the impertinence to ask a female friend who told me the tale.  ‘Why,’ she answered with the utmost simplicity, ’I understand that Miss A. and Miss B. and Mrs. C. would not listen to him, but he took Miss D.’s rejection most to heart.’  That was the head and front of his ‘constancy’ to Miss E., who had been loved, she boasted, for seven years ... that is, once at the beginning and once at the end.  It was just a coincidence of the ‘premier pas’ and the ‘pis aller.’

Beloved, I could not mean this for you; you are not made of such stuff, as we both know.

And for myself, it was my compromise with my own scruples, that you should not be ‘chained’ to me, not in the merest metaphor, that you should not seem to be bound, in honour or otherwise, so that if you stayed with me it should be your free choice to stay, not the consequence of a choice so many months before.  That was my compromise with my scruples, and not my doubt of your affection—­and least of all, was it an intention of trifling with you sooner or later that made me wish to suspend all decisions as long as possible.  I have decided (for me) to let it be as you shall please—­now I told you that before.  Either we will live on as we are, until an obstacle arises,—­for indeed I do not look for a ‘security’ where you suppose, and the very appearance of it there, is what most rebuts me—­or I will be yours in the obvious way, to go out of England the next half-hour if possible.  As to the steps to be taken (or not taken) before the last step, we must think of those.  The worst is that the only question is about a form.  Virtually the evil is the same all round, whatever we do.  Dearest, it was plain to see yesterday evening when he came into this room for a moment at seven o’clock, before going to his own to dress for dinner ... plain to see, that he was not altogether pleased at finding you here in the morning.  There was no pretext for objecting gravely—­but it was plain that he was not pleased.  Do not let this make you uncomfortable, he will forget all about it, and I was not scolded, do you understand.  It was more manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:—­and it was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve there.