No, you run the
show on the level the wealthiest is willing to go to, and to the
total charge each one contributes in the proportion of his income.
If one party has a thousand a year and the other five hundred,
and the thousand-pounder wants to live at the rate of nine hundred
a year, he pays six hundred and the other three hundred. Each is
paying his just share--that's the point. That's how we'd arrange
it, Rosalie."
She loved him so! If that were said a thousand times (as already
perhaps too often for the robust) it still would not approach
the volume of its swelling in the heart of Rosalie, for that was
ceaseless. His attitude in this matter now between them, as in
every matter, might have been the perfect agreement with her own
view that it was and yet might so have been presented as to be
much antipathetic to her. His attitude might have made her feel she
ought to say, "Thank you, Harry, for agreeing to that"; it might
have had the note, "I know exactly how you feel about marriage; I
want to make every-thing just as you wish." Quicksands! Principles
to be received as grants, bases of her defences to be accepted as
concessions! Quicksands! At either attitude, as at a foreign flavour
in a cup, she would have drawn back, suspicious; at either sense
within herself, of winning a favour, of accepting a hazard, she
would have taken alarm, dismayed. But it was why she loved him so
that here, as everywhere, his standpoint was her standpoint's own
reflection.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250