that one may have a violent attraction to a man
without in the least wanting to marry him, and that relieved her mind a
little.

As for HIM, the attraction on his part seems equally violent. We do the
most shockingly unconventional things together. He tells me that I
carry him off his feet--that I've revolutionised his ideas about the
"nice English Girl" (useless to protest that I'm not an English girl
but a hybrid Celt). He says that I've wiped off his slate the scheme of
life he'd been planning for his latter years. A comfortable existence
in England--his doctor advises him to settle down in a temperate
climate--an appointment on some City Board--rubber shares and that kind
of thing--you know it all--a red brick house in South Kensington and
perhaps a little place in the country. He did not fill in the
picture--but I did for him--with the charmingly domesticated wife--well
connected: the typical "nice English Girl," heiress of a comfortable
fortune to supplement his own, which he candidly admitted needs
supplementing.

Of course he's not a mere vulgar fortune-hunter. He must be genuinely
in love with the nice English Girl. And that's where I upset HIS
apple-cart.

In fact, we are both in an IMPASSE. I'm not eligible for his post and I
shouldn't want it if I were. To my mind marriage is only conceivable
with a barbarian or a millionaire. From the sordid atmosphere of
English conjugality upon an income of anything less than an assured
5,000 pounds a year, good Lord deliver me! And you know my reasons for
adding another clause to my litany. Good Lord deliver me also from
further experience of the exciting vicissitudes of a stock-jobbing
career!

Then again, apart from personal prejudices, I am appalled, quite
simply, at the cold-blooded marriage traffic that I see going on in
London. Any crime committed in the name of Love is forgivable, but to
sell a girl--soul and body to the highest bidder is to my mind, the
unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Frankly, I'm petrified with
amazement at the way in which mothers hurl their daughters at the head
of any man who will make a good settlement. There's Molly's sister--she
chases the game till she has corralled it, and once inside her walls
the unfortunate prey hasn't swallowed his first cup of tea before she
has wedded him in imagination to one of her girls--"How do you like Mr
CHOSE?" "Like him? What is there to like? He's the same as all the rest
of the men, and the