something I had to settle. Moreover, I began
to be greatly distracted by the interest and excitement of Tono-Bungay's
success, by the change and movement in things, the going to and fro.
I would forget her for days together, and then desire her with an
irritating intensity at last, one Saturday afternoon, after a brooding
morning, I determined almost savagely that these delays must end.

I went off to the little home at Walham Green, and made Marion come with
me to Putney Common. Marion wasn't at home when I got there and I had
to fret for a time and talk to her father, who was just back from
his office, he explained, and enjoying himself in his own way in the
greenhouse.

"I'm going to ask your daughter to marry me!" I said. "I think we've
been waiting long enough."

"I don't approve of long engagements either," said her father. "But
Marion will have her own way about it, anyhow. Seen this new powdered
fertiliser?"

I went in to talk to Mrs. Ramboat. "She'll want time to get her things,"
said Mrs. Ramboat....

I and Marion sat down together on a little seat under some trees at the
top of Putney Hill, and I came to my point abruptly.

"Look here, Marion," I said, "are you going to marry me or are you not?"

She smiled at me. "Well," she said, "we're engaged--aren't we?"

"That can't go on for ever. Will you marry me next week?"

She looked me in the face. "We can't," she said.

"You promised to marry me when I had three hundred a year."

She was silent for a space. "Can't we go on for a time as we are? We
COULD marry on three hundred a year. But it means a very little house.
There's Smithie's brother. They manage on two hundred and fifty, but
that's very little. She says they have a semi-detached house almost on
the road, and hardly a bit of garden. And the wall to next-door is so
thin they hear everything. When her baby cries--they rap. And people
stand against the railings and talk.... Can't we wait? You're doing so
well."

An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the
stupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered
her with immense restraint.

"If," I said, "we could have a double-fronted, detached house--at
Ealing, say--with a square patch of lawn in front and a garden
behind--and--and a tiled bathroom."

"That would be sixty pounds a year at least."

"Which means five hundred a year.... Yes, well, you see, I told my uncle
I wanted that, and I've got it."