Can you be made love to without a haunting suspicion that you brought it
on yourself?"

"Good heavens, no!" cried Riatt from the heart.

"Then, run while there's time."

As the ox fears the gad-fly and the elephant the mouse, so does the
bravest of men fear the emotional entanglement of any making but his own.
For an instant Riatt felt himself swept by the frankest, wildest panic.
Misadventures among the clouds he had had many times, and had looked a
clean straight death in the face. He had never felt anything like the
terror that for an instant possessed him. Then it passed and he said with
conviction:

"Well, after all, there are certain things you can't be made to do
against your will."

"Certainly. But you are not referring to marriage, are you?"

"Yes, I was."

"My poor, dear man! As if half the marriages in the world were not made
against the wish of one party or the other."

His heart sank. "It's perfectly true," he said. "And yet one does rather
hate to run away."

"Not so much as one hates afterward to think one might have."