Morris Delays the Wedding Day — Washington Square

The narrator corrects Morris. Catherine did not truly consent to an immediate private marriage. She burned her ships in words. He drew that declaration from her, then found excellent reasons not to name a day, while leaving her sure he had one in mind. The prize is great. It is only to be won, he thinks, by striking the mean between haste and caution. Clever people dislike risking their bones even when Providence is said to favour the bold. Catherine suffers another kind of arithmetic. Once she chose Morris against her father's warning, honour told her she had forfeited the right to live under his protection while defying his wisdom.

She wants Morris to offer another home soon, because remaining in Washington Square feels like theft of kindness she no longer deserves. Dr Sloper enforces the point by not looking at her or speaking to her for a week. She meets the silence with quiet industry and private visions of Morris. Mrs Penniman rustles through the crisis as if every trivial gesture meant something deeper. Catherine's grief stays unstudied. At last she tells her father she still sees Morris about once a week and expects to marry before long. He examines her like a stranger, asks why not three times a day, and says her moderation does not make disobedience respectable. When she pleads for some sign he still cares, he answers that her marriage is not a button on his coat.

The next day he softens only as strategy. He asks whether she will marry within four or five months, then offers a European trip during a six-month delay. Catherine brightens at the word like, yet knows she would rather stay with Morris. When she says she must tell Townsend, her father suggests she is asking permission. She then argues that if she lives with him she ought to obey him, and if she cannot obey she ought not enjoy his kindness. He laughs that the theory is his too, calls the idea bad taste, asks whether Townsend supplied it, and grows more determined than ever to take her abroad.