Juliana sighed against him. "You might have been," she admitted. She didn't know if that was true, but — she'd been thinking about it more and more lately, since the proposal. Before him, she had never considered anyone in that light at all; when they had been at the height of their interactions she had considered only the ways in which he was all wrong. But when they'd stopped talking, and especially since the proposal, she had remembered all of the ways in which this felt right, comfortable, comforting, and she had wondered. She didn't know what she wanted. She hadn't known then, and she still didn't know now. She was just trying to do her best with the choices presented to her at the moment.

She was going to marry Mr. Ainsworth. She had committed to that when she gave him her response to his proposal, and he had done nothing in the intervening months to merit her changing her mind. He was the choice presented to her — yes or no &mDASH; and the correct answer was obvious. But still — she wondered.

"I should go," she said, pulling away (with great hesitation) from their embrace and dabbing one of her eyes with the heel of her hand, lest he catch sight of the tear threatening to fall there.

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