She answered by
saying she had met so many people who cared for me that she felt
she almost knew me, to which I replied:
"In that case, why talk about me?"
THE LADY: "But some people care for both of us."
MARGOT (RATHER COLDLY): "I daresay."
THE LADY: "Don't be hard, I want to know if you love Peter Flower
. ... Do you intend to marry him?"
The question had come then: this terrible question which my mother
had never asked and which I had always evaded! Had it got to be
answered now ... and to a stranger?
With a determined effort to control myself I said:
"You mean, am I engaged to be married?"
THE LADY: "I mean what I say; are you going to marry Peter?"
MARGOT: "I have never told him I would."
THE LADY (VERY SLOWLY): "Remember, my life is bound up in your
answer ..."
Her words seemed to burn and I felt a kind of pity for her. She
was leaning forward with her eyes fastened on mine and her hands
clasped between her knees.
"If you don't love him enough to marry him, why don't you leave
him alone?" she said. "Why do you keep him bound to you? Why don't
you set him free?"
MARGOT: "He is free to love whom he likes; I don't keep him, but I
won't share him."
THE LADY: "You don't love him, but you want to keep him; that is
pure selfishness and vanity."
MARGOT: "Not at all! I would give him up to-morrow and have told
him so a thousand times, if he would marry; but he is not in a
position to marry any one."
THE LADY: "How can you say such a thing! His debts have just been
paid by God knows who--some woman, I suppose!--and you are rich
yourself.
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