Had Mr.Swancourt consented to an engagement of no less length than ten years, Stephen would have been comparatively cheerful in waiting; they would have felt that they were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden.
But, with a possibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet any prospect of the beginning; the zero of hope had yet to be reached.

Mr.
Swancourt would have to revoke his formidable words before the waiting for marriage could even set in.

And this was despair.
'I wish we could marry now,' murmured Stephen, as an impossible fancy.
'So do I,' said she also, as if regarding an idle dream.

''Tis the only thing that ever does sweethearts good!' 'Secretly would do, would it not, Elfie ?' 'Yes, secretly would do; secretly would indeed be best,' she said, and went on reflectively: 'All we want is to render it absolutely impossible for any future circumstance to upset our future intention of being happy together; not to begin being happy now.' 'Exactly,' he murmured in a voice and manner the counterpart of hers.
'To marry and part secretly, and live on as we are living now; merely to put it out of anybody's power to force you away from me, dearest.' 'Or you away from me, Stephen.' 'Or me from you.

It is possible to conceive a force of circumstance strong enough to make any woman in the world marry against her will: no conceivable pressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once married to her lover anybody else's wife.' Now up to this point the idea of an immediate secret marriage had been held by both as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply to beguile a miserable moment.