‘You could not like me enough to marry me.’
‘I don’t think I could marry any one.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you care for any one else?’
‘No, indeed I don’t. I like you very much. I want you to be my friend…. But you don’t understand. Men never do. I suppose affection would not satisfy you.’
‘But you could not marry me?’
‘I’d sooner marry you than any one. But—-’
‘But what?’
Mildred told the story of her engagement, and how in the end she had been forced to break it off.
‘And you think if you engaged yourself to me it might end in the same way?’
‘Yes. And I would not cause you pain. Forgive me.’
‘But if you never intend to marry, what do you intend to do?’
‘There are other things to do surely.’
‘What?’
‘There’s art.’
‘Art!’
‘You think I shall not succeed with my paint
