of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, and
instinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamental
ideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young in
quality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatly
swayed by the suggestion of our circumstances, complex, incoherent and
formless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us there
struggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, in
forms as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Far
more than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed to
me not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me she
should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share my
struggles and the real hardships they would have meant for her, devote
herself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration in
imaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the whole
twenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whatever
family we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths of
my being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive
intention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I was
prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to the
effort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for my
own, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to that
service. It seemed mere perversity to me then that she should turn even
such vows as that against me.

"But I don't want it, Stevenage," she said. "I don't want it. I want you
to go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do great
things, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don't
you see how much better that is for you and for me--and for the world
and our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialist
in feeding and keeping me."

"Then--then _wait_ for me!" I cried.

"But--I want to live myself! I don't want to wait. I want a great house,
I want a great position, I want space and freedom. I want to have
clothes--and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be
a great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now,
dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her
light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your
honor? You will not be able to marry me for years a