'Do you wish to be freed from your engagement, Jasper?'
He was not strong enough to reply with a plain 'Yes,' and so have
done with his perplexities. He feared the girl's face, and he
feared his own subsequent emotions.
'Don't talk in that way, Marian. The question is simply this: Are
we to wait a year, or are we to wait five years? In a year's
time, I shall probably be able to have a small house somewhere
out in the suburbs. If we are married then, I shall be happy
enough with so good a wife, but my career will take a different
shape. I shall just throw overboard certain of my ambitions, and
work steadily on at earning a livelihood. If we wait five years,
I may perhaps have obtained an editorship, and in that case I
should of course have all sorts of better things to offer you.'
'But, dear, why shouldn't you get an editorship all the same if
you are married?'
'I have explained to you several times that success of that kind
is not compatible with a small house in the suburbs and all the
ties of a narrow income. As a bachelor, I can go about freely,
make acquaintances, dine at people's houses, perhaps entertain a
useful friend now and then--and so on.
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