"You would have to give it up, one day, Elizabeth. Besides, if you like," he said, desperately, "I'll go to Ferrol and ask him to remove me from Paris back to London. I'll do anything to meet you, I only want to make you happy."
"Oh, don't keep on saying that sort of thing," she said; "it irritates me. Those hollow repetitions of set phrases—just because they're the right thing to say."
"I think you are unreasonable," he began. "I have worked all these years for success, and now, just when I've won it, you wish me to throw everything away."
"I wish you to do nothing against your will. I thought you would have seen my point of view. I thought you would be ready to share in my work, which is the work of humanity.... I am sorry. You see, we clash. We shall be better alone."
He stared at her with dull incomprehension. "We clash. We shall be better alone." The words repeated themselves over and over again in his brain. And his mind suddenly went back to a little room in the Strand and the tears of Lilian....
"You mean that," he said, slowly. "You mean that."
She nodded. "Don't you see how impossible it would be?"
"You never loved me," he flung forth as a challenge. "You could have helped me and understood me.... I am not so bad as you think I am."
A sad smile answered him. "I understand you so well, Humphrey, that I know I shall never be able to help you."
He looked about him in weak hesitation. "I suppose I must begin again," he said.