"Poor, poor Joyce!" I said. "And poor you!"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Why, I mean—and I, too, can see June while I say it!—I mean that you are making a terrible mistake. Oh, Robert Lorillard, don't pretend not to understand. We're not two strangers fencing! I'm not just a bold creature rushing in where angels fear to tread. I know!—I have rushed in, but I'm not bold. I'm frightened to death. Only—I had to come. Every day I see that glorious girl breaking her heart. She hasn't said a word, or looked a look, or wept a weep. She's a soldier. But she's like a lost soul turned out of Paradise. The more I got to know of her the more I felt you couldn't have sent her away and found another place for her because you were bored. So I came to see you. And you needn't mind my knowing the real reason you sent her out of your house. I won't tell her. If any one does that it must be you. And it ought to be you. You love each other. You belong to each other. You'd be divinely happy together. You're wretched apart."
"You say that?" Robert exclaimed, when by sheer force of lungs I'd made him hear me through. "You—June's friend!"
"Yes. It's because I was her friend, and knew her so well, that I want you to listen to your own heart; for if you don't, you'll break Joyce Arnold's. June wouldn't want you to sacrifice your two lives on the shrine of her memory. She loved happiness, herself. And she liked other people to be happy."
Robert's eyes lit, whether with joy or anger I couldn't tell.
"You think June would be willing to have me marry another woman?" he said.
"Yes, I do, if you loved the woman. And you do love her. It would be useless to tell me you don't."
"I'm not going to tell you I don't. I've tried not to. I hoped she didn't care."
"She does. Desperately, frightfully. I do believe it's killing her."