For her. For himself.
She wanted him toloveher.
How foolish! As if that would make any difference to anything.
“You cannot answer, can you?” he said. “Because youdidmean what you said. I think perhaps Idolike myself well enough. It is you who do not.”
But he held up a staying hand and smiled crookedly as she opened her mouth and drew breath to speak again.
“Enough!” he said. “I think you must be a very good teacher indeed, Susanna Osbourne. I have never done as much soul-searching as I have since I met you. I used to think I was a pretty cheerful, uncomplicated fellow. Now I feel rather as if I had been taken apart at the seams and stitched together again with some of my stuffing left out.”
Despite herself her mouth quirked at the corners and drew up into a smile.
“Then I am definitely not a good teacher,” she said. “But you are a good man, Peter. Youare. It is just that…”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I am not only a woman,” she said. “I am aperson. All women are persons. If we are weak and dependent upon men, it is because we have allowed men to mold us into those images. Perhaps it makes men feel good and strong to see us that way. And perhaps most women are happy to be seen thus. Perhaps society works reasonably well because both men and women are happy with the roles our society has given them to play. But I was thrown out on my own early in life. I will never say it was a good thing that happened to me, but Iamgrateful that circumstances have forced me to live outside the mold. I would rather be a complete person than just a woman even if I must be alone as a result.”
“You do not need to be alone,” he said.
“No.” She smiled at him. “You would marry me and support and protect me for the rest of my life. And so we move full circle. I am sorry, Peter. I did not mean to deliver such a pompous speech. I did not even know I believed those things until I heard them come out of my mouth. But Idobelieve them.”
“It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and handing her her bonnet. “You are happier without me. It is a humbling reality.”
And she could not now contradict him, could she?
She took her bonnet and busied herself with putting it back on and tying the ribbons beneath her chin.
“Will you do one thing for me?” she asked him.
“What?” he asked her.
She looked into his eyes.
“When you go home to Sidley Park for Christmas,” she said, “will youstaythere? Make it your home and your life?” She was appalled suddenly by her presumption.
“And marry Miss Flynn-Posy too?” His smile was crooked.
“If you decide that youwishto marry her, yes,” she said. “Will youtalkto your mother, Peter?Reallytalk?”
“Throw my weight around? Lay down the law?” he said. “Leave misery in my wake?”
“Tell her who you are,” she said. “Perhaps she has been so intent upon loving you all your life that really she does not know you at all. Perhaps—probably—she does not know your dreams.”
She felt horribly embarrassed when he did not immediately reply. Howdaredshe interfere in his life this way? Even when guiding and advising the girls at school about their various problems and about their futures, she was careful never to be as dogmatic as she had just been.
“I am sorry,” she said, “I have no right—”
“And willyoudo one last thing forme?” he asked her.
Reality smote her like a fist to the stomach.One last thing.This time tomorrow he would be long gone. He would be only a memory and not even the purely happy one she had persuaded herself earlier in the afternoon he would be. The last several minutes had destroyed that possibility. She looked at him in inquiry.
“Will you allow me to take you to meet Lady Markham and Edith?” he asked her.
“Now?”she said.
“Why not?” he asked her. “Lawrence Morley, Edith’s husband, has taken lodgings on Laura Place, only a stone’s throw away. I promised to call there before leaving Bath. And I promised Edith that I would ask you if she may call on you or if you will call on her.”
