Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence

Book I 18. Chapter XVIII. (continued)

Archer reddened, and hurried on with a rush. "We had a frank talk--almost the first. She thinks my impatience a bad sign."

"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?"

"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her. She thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some one that I--care for more."

Madame Olenska examined this curiously. "But if she thinks that--why isn't she in a hurry too?"

"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler. She insists all the more on the long engagement, to give me time--"

"Time to give her up for the other woman?"

"If I want to."

Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed eyes. Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of her horses.

"That IS noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.

"Yes. But it's ridiculous."

"Ridiculous? Because you don't care for any one else?"

"Because I don't mean to marry any one else."

"Ah." There was another long interval. At length she looked up at him and asked: "This other woman-- does she love you?"

"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinking of is--was never--"

"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?"

"There's your carriage," said Archer.

She half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes. Her fan and gloves lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.