FullReads

“I guess that won’t do much good. They want me in Brooklyn, they don’t want me at sea.”

“Well, they are capable of going to Europe for a year, on purpose to take me,” Geoigina said.

“How can they take you, if you won’t go? And if you should go, what good would it do, if you were only to find me here when you came back, just the same as you left me?”

“Oh, well!” said Georgina, with her lovely smile, “of course they think that absence would cure me of–cure me of–” And she paused, with a certain natural modesty, not saying exactly of what.

“Cure you of what, darling? Say it, please say it,” the young man murmured, drawing her hand surreptitiously into his arm.

“Of my absurd infatuation!”

“And would it, dearest?”

“Yes, very likely. But I don’t mean to try. I sha’n’t go to Europe,–not when I don’t want to. But it’s better I should see less of you,–even that I should appear–a little–to give you up.”

“A little? What do you call a little?”

Georgina said nothing, for a moment. “Well, that, for instance, you should n’t hold my hand quite so tight!” And she disengaged this conscious member from the pressure of his arm.

“What good will that do?” Benyon asked,

“It will make them think it ‘s all over,–that we have agreed to part.”

“And as we have done nothing of the kind, how will that help us?”

They had stopped at the crossing of a street; a heavy dray was lumbering slowly past them. Georgina, as she stood there, turned her face to her lover, and rested her eyes for some moments on his own. At last: “Nothing will help us; I don’t think we are very happy,” she answered, while her strange, ironical, inconsequent smile played about her beautiful lips.

“I don’t understand how you see things. I thought you were going to say you would marry me!” Benyon rejoined, standing there still, though the dray had passed.

“Oh, yes, I will marry you!” And she moved away, across the street. That was the manner in which she had said it, and it was very characteristic of her. When he saw that she really meant it, he wished they were somewhere else,–he hardly knew where the proper place would be,–so that he might take her in his arms. Nevertheless, before they separated that day he had said to her he hoped she remembered they would be very poor, reminding her how great a change she would find it She answered that she should n’t mind, and presently she said that if this was all that prevented them the sooner they were married the better. The next time he saw her she was quite of the same opinion; but he found, to his surprise, it was now her conviction that she had better not leave her father’s house. The ceremony should take place secretly, of course; but they would wait awhile to let their union be known.

“What good will it do us, then?” Raymond Benyon asked.

Georgina colored. “Well, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you!”

Then it seemed to him that he did know. Yet, at the same time, he could not see why, once the knot was tied, secrecy should be required. When he asked what special event they were to wait for, and what should give them the signal to appear as man and wife, she answered that her parents would probably forgive her, if they were to discover, not too abruptly, after six months, that she had taken the great step. Benyon supposed that she had ceased to care whether they forgave her or not; but he had already perceived that women are full of inconsistencies. He had believed her capable of marrying him out of bravado, but the pleasure of defiance was absent if the marriage was kept to themselves. Now, too, it appeared that she was not especially anxious to defy,–she was disposed rather to manage, to cultivate opportunities and reap the fruits of a waiting game.