“But once Owen’s future is settled, you won’t, surely, for the sake of what you call seeing him through, ask that I should go away again without you?” He drew her closer as they walked. “Owen will understand, if you don’t. Since he’s in the same case himself I’ll throw myself on his mercy. He’ll see that I have the first claim on you; he won’t even want you not to see it.” “Owen sees everything: I’m not afraid of that. But his future isn’t settled. He’s very young to marry--too young, his grandmother is sure to think--and the marriage he wants to make is not likely to convince her to the contrary.” “You don’t mean that it’s like his first choice?” “Oh, no! But it’s not what Madame de Chantelle would call a good match; it’s not even what I call a wise one.” “Yet you’re backing him up?” “Yet I’m backing him up.” She paused. “I wonder if you’ll understand? What I’ve most wanted for him, and shall want for Effie, is that they shall always feel free to make their own mistakes, and never, if possible, be persuaded to make other people’s. Even if Owen’s marriage is a mistake, and has to be paid for, I believe he’ll learn and grow in the paying. Of course I can’t make Madame de Chantelle see this; but I can remind her that, with his character--his big rushes of impulse, his odd intervals of ebb and apathy--she may drive him into some worse blunder if she thwarts him now.” “And you mean to break the news to her as soon as she comes back from Ouchy?” “As soon as I see my way to it. She knows the girl and likes her: that’s our hope. And yet it may, in the end, prove our danger, make it harder for us all, when she learns the truth, than if Owen had chosen a stranger. I can’t tell you more till I’ve told her: I’ve promised Owen not to tell any one. All I ask you is to give me time, to give me a few days at any rate She’s been wonderfully ‘nice,’ as she would call it, about you, and about the fact of my having soon to leave Givre; but that, again, may make it harder for Owen. At any rate, you can see, can’t you, how it makes me want to stand by him? You see, I couldn’t bear it if the least fraction of my happiness seemed to be stolen from his--as if it were a little scrap of happiness that had to be pieced out with other people’s!” She clasped her hands on Darrow’s arm. “I want our life to be like a house with all the windows lit: I’d like to string lanterns from the roof and chimneys!” She ended with an inward tremor. All through her exposition and her appeal she had told herself that the moment could hardly have been less well chosen. In Darrow’s place she would have felt, as he doubtless did, that her carefully developed argument was only the disguise of an habitual indecision. It was the hour of all others when she would have liked to affirm herself by brushing aside every obstacle to his wishes; yet it was only by opposing them that she could show the strength of character she wanted him to feel in her.