‘I don’t wish to know. But it seems to me,’ said Isabel, ‘that one day when we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him.’
Ralph smokingly considered. ‘I hope that what I said then had no weight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to marry you I’d never have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make him a believer.’
‘I think not. I don’t understand the matter, and I’m not conscious of any mission of that sort. You’re evidently disappointed,’ Isabel added, looking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. ‘You’d have liked me to make such a marriage.’
‘Not in the least. I’m absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don’t pretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching you—with the deepest interest.’
She gave rather a conscious sigh. ‘I wish I could be as interesting to myself as I am to you!’
‘There you’re not candid again; you’re extremely interesting to yourself. Do you know, however,’ said Ralph, ‘that if you’ve really given Warburton his final answer I’m rather glad it has been what it was. I don’t mean I’m glad for you, and still less of course for him. I’m glad for myself.’
‘Are you thinking of proposing to me?’
‘By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who won’t marry Lord Warburton.’
‘That’s what your mother counts upon too,’ said Isabel.
‘Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of your career. I shall not see all of it, but I shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend you’d still have a career—a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know I’m extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you’ve kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it.’
‘I don’t understand you very well,’ said Isabel, ‘but I do so well enough to be able to say that if you look for grand examples of anything from me I shall disappoint you.’
‘You’ll do so only by disappointing yourself—and that will go hard with you!’
To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it that would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: ‘I don’t see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.’
‘There’s nothing she can do so well. But you’re of course so manysided.’
‘If one’s two-sided it’s enough,’ said Isabel.
‘You’re the most charming of polygons!’ her companion broke out. At a glance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it went on: ‘You want to see life—you’ll be hanged if you don’t, as the young men say.’
‘I don’t think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I do want to look about me.’
‘You want to drain the cup of experience.’