Well, I am not
seeking to avoid discredit. I was in love with Nancy Rufford as I
am in love with the poor child's memory, quietly and quite
tenderly in my American sort of way. I had never thought about it
until I heard Leonora state that I might now marry her. But, from
that moment until her worse than death, I do not suppose that I
much thought about anything else. I don't mean to say that I sighed
about her or groaned; I just wanted to marry her as some people
want to go to Carcassonne.
Do you understand the feeling--the sort of feeling that you must
get certain matters out of the way, smooth out certain fairly
negligible complications before you can go to a place that has,
during all your life, been a sort of dream city? I didn't attach much
importance to my superior years. I was forty-five, and she, poor
thing, was only just rising twenty-two. But she was older than her
years and quieter. She seemed to have an odd quality of sainthood,
as if she must inevitably end in a convent with a white coif
framing her face. But she had frequently told me that she had no
vocation; it just simply wasn't there--the desire to become a nun.
Well, I guess that I was a sort of convent myself; it seemed fairly
proper that she should make her vows to me.
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