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He realised more or less what his mother felt.
It only hardened his soul. He made himself callous towards her; but it
was like being callous to his own health. It undermined him quickly; yet
he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one evening. He had been
talking to Miriam for some weeks, but had not come to the point. Now he
said suddenly:
"I am twenty-four, almost."
She had been brooding. She looked up at him suddenly in surprise.
"Yes. What makes you say it?"
There was something in the charged atmosphere that she dreaded.
"Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four."
She laughed quaintly, saying:
"Does it need Sir Thomas More's sanction?"
"No; but one ought to marry about then."
"Ay," she answered broodingly; and she waited.
"I can't marry you," he continued slowly, "not now, because we've no
money, and they depend on me at home."
She sat half-guessing what was coming.
"But I want to marry now--"
"You want to marry?" she repeated.


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