Page:Hichens - The Green Carnation.djvu/214

206 even voice. Lady Locke left her hand in his. She was quite calm too.

"I cannot marry you," she said. "Do you wish me to tell you why? Probably you do not; but I think I will tell you all the same. I am not brilliant, and therefore I have no wish to be absurd. If I married you I should be merely absurd without being brilliant at all. You do not love me. I think you love nothing. I like you; I am interested by you. Perhaps if you had a different nature I might even love you. But I can never love an echo, and you are an echo."

"An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats," he said.

"But if the voice is quite ugly the echo cannot be beautiful," she answered. "I do not wish to be too frank, but as you have asked me to marry you I will say this. Your character seems to me to be an echo of Mr. Amarinth's. I believe that he merely poses; but do those who imitate him merely pose? Do you merely pose? What Mr. Amarinth really is it is quite impossible to tell. Perhaps there is nothing real about him at all. Perhaps, as he has said, his real man is only a Mrs. Harris. He may be abnormal au fond; but you are not! What is your real self? Is it what I see, what I know?"