Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it came to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She had become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness had gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had gone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry for them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I came dully to my point. “And now,” I cried, “will you marry me?” “No,” she said, “I shall keep to my life here.” I asked her to marry me in a year’s time. She shook her head. “This world is a soft world,” I said, “in spite of my present disasters. I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for—in a year I could be a prosperous man.” “No,” she said, “I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby.” “But—!” I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of hopeless cross-purposes. “Look here,” she said. “I have been awake all night and every night. I have been thinking of this—every moment when we have not been together. I’m not answering you on an impulse. I love you. I love you. I’ll say that over ten thousand times. But here we are—” “The rest of life together,” I said. “It wouldn’t be together. Now we are together. Now we have been together. We are full of memories I do not feel I can ever forget a single one.” “Nor I.” “And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else is there to do?” She turned her white face to me. “All I know of love, all I have ever dreamt or learnt of love I have packed into these days for you. You think we might live together and go on loving. No! For you I will have no vain repetitions. You have had the best and all of me. Would you have us, after this, meet again in London or Paris or somewhere, scuffle to some wretched dressmaker’s, meet in a _cabinet particulier?_” “No,” I said. “I want you to marry me. I want you to play the game of life with me as an honest woman should. Come and live with me. Be my wife and squaw. Bear me children.” I looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry her yet. I spluttered for words. “My God! Beatrice!” I cried; “but this is cowardice and folly! Are _you_ afraid of life? You of all people! What does it matter what has been or what we were? Here we are with the world before us! Start clean and new with me. We’ll fight it through! I’m not such a simple lover that I’ll not tell you plainly when you go wrong, and fight our difference out with you. It’s the one thing I want, the one thing I need—to have you, and more of you and more! This love-making—it’s love-making. It’s just a part of us, an incident—” She shook her head and stopped me abruptly. “It’s all,” she said. “All!” I protested.