I want
to wait and marry as other girls do, and have a real wedding and a
house to go to. I should hate it. I couldn't. It's like a squaw.
You oughtn't to ask it."
Her terror lent her an unaccustomed subtlety. She eluded the main
issue, seizing on objections that did not betray her, but that were
reasonable, what might have been expected by the most unsuspicious of
men:
"And as for your being afraid of falling sick in these dreadful places,
isn't that all the more reason why I should be free to give all my time
and thought to you? If you don't feel so strong, then marrying is the
last thing I'd think of doing. I'm going to be with you all the time,
closer than I ever was before. No man's going to come between us.
Marry David and push you off into the background when you're not well
and want me most--that's perfectly ridiculous."
She meant all she said. It was the truth, but it was the truth
reinforced, given a fourfold strength by her own unwillingness. The
thought that she had successfully defeated him, pushed the marriage
away into an indefinite future, relieved her so that the dread usually
evoked by his ill health was swept aside.
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