"I don't believe you ever will," said Jack. Then, for he couldn't bear that she should misunderstand him for another moment, misunderstanding when they had come so far was too unendurable, he went on in a hurried undertone: "You aren't on her side, really. You can never be on her side. You can never be like her, or see like her. And I don't want you to. It's you who see clearly, not she. It's you who are all right."
Her long silence, after this, seemed to him like the hovering of hands upon him; as though, in darkness, she sought by touch to recognize some strange object put before her.
"But then,—" she, too, only breathed it out at last,—"but then,—you are not on her side."
"That's just it," said Jack. He did not look at her and she was silent once more before his confession.
"But," she again took up the search, "that is terrible for her, if she feels it."
"And for me, too, isn't it?" he questioned, as if he turned the surfaces of the object beneath her fingers.
The soft, frightened hover seemed to go all over it, to recognize it finally, and to draw back, terrified, from recognition.
"Most terrible of all for me, if I have come between you," she said.
Her pain pierced him so, that he put out his hand and took hers. Don't think that; you mustn't think that, not for a moment. It's not that you came between us. It's only that, because of you, I began to see things—as I hadn't seen them. It was just,—well, just like seeing one color change when another is put beside it. Imogen's blue, now that your gold has come, is turned to green; that's all that has happened."
"All that has happened! Do you know what you are saying, Jack! If my gold were gone, would the blue come back again?"