"You know I can't afford it.
After all, I'm in my first year, I shan't earn a penny for six years."
"Oh, I'm not blaming you.
I wouldn't marry you if you went down on your bended knees to me."
He had thought of marriage more than once, but it was a step from which he shrank.
In Paris he had come by the opinion that marriage was a ridiculous institution of the philistines.
He knew also that a permanent tie would ruin him.
He had middle-class instincts, and it seemed a dreadful thing to him to marry a waitress.
A common wife would prevent him from getting a decent practice.
Besides, he had only just enough money to last him till he was qualified; he could not keep a wife even if they arranged not to have children.
He thought of Cronshaw bound to a vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay.
He foresaw what Mildred, with her genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become: it was impossible for him to marry her.
But he decided only with his reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future could look after itself.
It might end in disaster; he did not care.
When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing else, and he had a more than common power to persuade himself of the reasonableness of what he wished to do.
He found himself overthrowing all the sensible arguments which had occurred to him against marriage.
Each day he found that he was more passionately devoted to her; and his unsatisfied love became angry and resentful.
"By George, if I marry her I'll make her pay for all the suffering I've endured," he said to himself.
At last he could bear the agony no longer.
After dinner one evening in the little restaurant in Soho, to which now they often went, he spoke to her.
"I say, did you mean it the other day that you wouldn't marry me if I asked you?"
"Yes, why not?"
"Because I can't live without you.
I want you with me always.
I've tried to get over it and I can't.
I never shall now.
I want you to marry me."
She had read too many novelettes not to know how to take such an offer.
"I'm sure I'm very grateful to you, Philip.
I'm very much flattered at your proposal."
"Oh, don't talk rot.
You will marry me, won't you?"
"D'you think we should be happy?"
"No.
But what does that matter?"
The words were wrung out of him almost against his will.
They surprised her.
"Well, you are a funny chap.
Why d'you want to marry me then?
The other day you said you couldn't afford it."
"I think I've got about fourteen hundred pounds left.
Two can live just as cheaply as one.
That'll keep us till I'm qualified and have got through with my hospital appointments, and then I can get an assistantship."
"It means you wouldn't be able to earn anything for six years.
We should have about four pounds a week to live on till then, shouldn't we?"
"Not much more than three.
There are all my fees to pay."
"And what would you get as an assistant?"
"Three pounds a week."
"D'you mean to say you have to work all that time and spend a small fortune just to earn three pounds a week at the end of it?