As to Bertha, this seemed, in the main, “Sorbet all over.” There was nothing new. There was the “difference.” But it was the familiar process; he was attempting to convince himself, heartlessly, on her. Whether he would ever manage it was problematic. There was no sign of his being likely to do so more to-day than any other day. She listened; sententiously released him from time to time. Just as she had seemed strange to him in some way when he came in, seen through his “indifference,” so he had appeared a little odd to her. This had wiped off the dullness of habit for a moment. This husband she obstinately wanted had been recognized. She had seized him round the shoulders and clung to him, as though he had been her child that some senseless force were about to snatch. As to his superstition about marriage—was it not merely restlessness of youth, propaganda of Liberty, that a year or so would see in Limbo? For was he not a “marrying man”? She was sure of it! She had tried not to frighten him, and to keep “Marriage” in the background. So Tarr’s disquisition had no effect except for one thing. When he spoke of _pleasure he derived from idea of marriage_, she wearily pricked up her ears. The conviction that Tarr was a domesticated animal was confirmed from his own lips. The only result of his sortie was to stimulate her always vigilant hope and irony, both, just a little. He had intended to prepare the couch for her despair! His last words, affirming Marriage to be a game not worth the candle, brought a faint and “weary” smile to her face. She was once more, obviously, _au bout de force_. “Sorbert; I understand you. Do realize that. There is no necessity for all this rigmarole With me. If you think you shouldn’t marry—why, it’s quite simple! Don’t think that I would force you to marry! Oh, no!” (The training guttural unctuous accent she had in speaking English filled her discourse with natural emphasis.) “I always said that you were too young. You need a wife. You’ve just said yourself about your feeling for marriage. But you are _so_ young!” She gazed at him with compassionate, half-smiling moistened look, as though there were something deformed about being _so_ young. A way she had was to treat anything that obviously pointed to her as the object of pity, as though it manifestly indicated, on the contrary, _him_. “Yes, Sorbet, you are right,” she finished briskly. “I think it would be _madness_ for us to marry!” A suggestion that their leisurely journey towards marriage was perhaps a mistake was at once seriously, and with conviction far surpassing that he had ventured on, taken up by her. She would immediately call a halt, pitch tents preliminary to turning back. A pause was necessary before beginning the return journey. Next day they would be jogging on again in the same disputed direction.