"At times I think," she said one day when he caught her in his arms on a
sudden impulse and kissed her, "that the reason you don't try to rule me is
because you don't care enough."
"That's precisely it." He was smoothing her eyebrows with his forefinger.
"I don't care enough about ruling. I don't care enough for the sort of love
that responds to 'must.'"
"But a woman likes to have 'must' said to her sometimes."
"Does she? Do you? Well--I'll say 'must' to you. You must love me freely
and voluntarily, or not at all. You must do as you please."
"But don't you see that that drives me from you often, keeps us apart in
many ways. Now if you compelled me to think as you do, to like what you
like--"
"But I couldn't. Then you would no longer be _you_. And I like you so
well just as you are that I would not change an idea in your head."
Marian sighed and went away to her dinner party. She felt that she was in
danger. "Not of falling in love with some other man," she thought, "for
that's impossible. But if a man were to come along who invited me to be
interested in his work, to keep him at whatever he was doing, I'd accept
and that would lead on and on--where?"
She soon had an opportunity to answer that question. Howard went away to
Washington to assist the party leaders in putting through a difficult
tariff-reform bill which all the protected interests were fighting.
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