So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still
making out that she had been right-and she had too-not to marry him.
For in marriage a
little licence, a little independence there must be between people
living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave
her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance? Some
committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be
shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it
came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to
break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them
ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for
years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and
then the horror of the moment when some one told her at a concert
that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never
should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her.
Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian women did
presumably-silly, pretty,
flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For
he was quite happy, he assured her- perfectly happy, though he had
never done a thing that they talked of; his whole life had been a
failure. It made her angry still.