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The New Machiavelli
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“Well!” I said.
“Dear heart,” said Isabel, facing it, “it’s no good waiting for things to overtake us; we’re at the parting of the ways.”
“What are we to do?”
“They won’t let us go on.”
“Damn them!”
“They are ORGANISING scandal.”
“It’s no good waiting for things to overtake us,” I echoed; “they have overtaken us.” I turned on her. “What do you want to do?”
“Everything,” she said. “Keep you and have our work. Aren’t we Mates?”
“We can’t.”
“And we can’t!”
“I’ve got to tell Margaret,” I said.
“Margaret!”
“I can’t bear the idea of any one else getting in front with it. I’ve been wincing about Margaret secretly – ”
“I know. You’ll have to tell her – and make your peace with her.”
She leant back against the bookcases under the window.
“We’ve had some good times, Master;” she said, with a sigh in her voice.
And then for a long time we stared at one another in silence.
“We haven’t much time left,” she said.
“Shall we bolt?” I said.
“And leave all this?” she asked, with her eyes going round the room. “And that?” And her head indicated Westminster. “No!”
I said no more of bolting.
“We’ve got to screw ourselves up to surrender,” she said.
“Something.”
“A lot.”
“Master,” she said, “it isn’t all sex and stuff between us?”
“No!”
“I can’t give up the work. Our work’s my life.”
We came upon another long pause.
“No one will believe we’ve ceased to be lovers – if we simply do,” she said.
“We shouldn’t.”
“We’ve got to do something more parting than that.”
I nodded, and again we paused. She was coming to something.
“I could marry Shoesmith,” she said abruptly.
“But – ” I objected.
“He knows. It wasn’t fair. I told him.”
“Oh, that explains,” I said. “There’s been a kind of sulkiness – But – you told him?”
She nodded. “He’s rather badly hurt,” she said. “He’s been a good friend to me. He’s curiously loyal. But something, something he said one day – forced me to let him know… That’s been the beastliness of all this secrecy. That’s the beastliness of all secrecy. You have to spring surprises on people. But he keeps on. He’s steadfast. He’d already suspected. He wants me very badly to marry him…”
“But you don’t want to marry him?”
“I’m forced to think of it.”
“But does he want to marry you at that? Take you as a present from the world at large? – against your will and desire?.. I don’t understand him.”
“He cares for me.”
“How?”
“He thinks this is a fearful mess for me. He wants to pull it straight.”
We sat for a time in silence, with imaginations that obstinately refused to take up the realities of this proposition.
“I don’t want you to marry Shoesmith,” I said at last.
“Don’t you like him?”
“Not as your husband.”
“He’s a very clever and sturdy person – and very generous and devoted to me.”
“And me?”
“You can’t expect that. He thinks you are wonderful – and, naturally, that you ought not to have started this.”
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