"Would you care what might be said of us--as long as we know our
friendship is blameless? I am not taking you from her, am I? I am
not taking anything away from her, am I?
"I have not always played squarely with men. I don't think it is
possible. They have hoped for--various eventualities. I have not
encouraged them; I have merely let them hope. Which is not square.
"But I wish always to play square with women. Unless a woman does,
nobody will.... And that is why I ask you, Clive--am I robbing her--if
you come back to me--as you were?--nothing more--nothing less, Clive,
but just exactly as you were."
It was impossible for him to control his voice or his words or even
his thoughts just yet; he stood with his lean head turned partly from
her, motionless as a rock, in the desperate grip of self-mastery,
crushing the slender hands that alternately yielded and clasped his
own.
"Oh, Clive," she said, "Clive! You don't know--you never can know what
loneliness means to such a woman as I am.... I thought once--many
times--that I could never again speak to you--that I never again could
care to hear about you.... But I was wrong, pitifully wrong.
"It was not jealousy of her, Clive; you know that, don't you? There
had never been any question of such sentiment between you and
me--excepting once--one night--that last night when you said
good-bye--and you were very much overwrought.
"So it was not jealousy.... It was loneliness. I wanted you, even if
you had fallen in love. That sort of love had nothing to do with us!
"There was nothing in it that ought to have come between you and
me?... Besides, if such an ephemeral thought ever drifted through my
idle mind, I knew on reflection that you and I could never be destined
to marry, even if such sentiment ever inclined us. I knew it and
accepted it without troubling to analyse the reasons. I had no desire
to invade your world--less desire now that I have penetrated it
professionally and know a little about it.
"It was not jealousy, Clive."
He swung around, bent swiftly and pressed his lips to her hands. And
she abandoned them to him with all her heart and soul in an
overwhelming passion of purest emotion.
"I couldn't stand it, Clive," she said, "when I heard you were at your
hotel alone.... And all the unhappiness I had heard of--your married
life--I--I couldn't stand it; I couldn't let you remain there all
alone!