"Yes, I do in a way. It has to be--and the sooner the better. And
whether I do or not, I don't like to feel that I can't. Nobody likes
to be tied."

"Then nobody should be married," said Mabel, who had listened to these
outbursts of speech, and pauses which had been really to find words
rather than breath, with staring and hard-rimmed eyes. She had a gift
of logic, and could be pitiless. "What it comes to, you know," she
said, "is that you want to have your fun in private. We all do, I
suppose; but that can't come off in nine cases out of ten. Especially
with a man like James, who is as sharp as a razor, and just as edgy.
The moment anybody peers at you you show a tarnish, and get put off.
It doesn't look to me as if you thought so highly of--the other as you
think you do. After all, if you come to that, the paraphernalia of a
wedding is pretty horrid; one feels awfully like a heifer at the
Cattle Show. At least, I did. The complacency of the bridegroom is
pretty repulsive. You feel like a really fine article. But one lives
it down, if one means it."

Lucy told her to go, or as good as told her. Sisters may be plain with
each other. She wasn't able to answer her, though she felt that an
answer there was.

What she had said was partly true. Lucy was a romantic without knowing
it. So had Psyche been, and the fatal lamp should have told her so.
The god removed himself. Thus she felt it to be. He seemed just
outside the door, and a word, a look, would recall him to his dark
beauty of presence. That he was beautiful so she knew too well, that
he was unbeautiful in the glare of day she felt rather than knew. The
fault, she suspected, lay in her, who could not see him in the light
without the blemish of circumstance--not his, but circumstance, in
whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her
faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than
to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her
affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him
less, but rather that she might love him more!

But the spirit of adventure grew upon her in spite of herself, the
sense of something in the wind, of the morning bringing one nearer to
a great day. It pervaded the house; Crewdson got in the way of saying,
"When we are abroad, we shall find that useful, ma'am"; or "Mr.
Macartney will be asking for that in Norway." As for James, it had
changed his spots,