"For both of you."
"Worse for me, because I cared more, really cared more."
"No, worse for her, for it is you who have judged and rejected her."
"She thinks that it is she who has judged and rejected me."
"She tries to think it; she does not always succeed. It has been bitter, it has been cruel for her."
"Oh, yes, bitter and cruel," he assented.
"Don't try to minimize her pain, Jack."
"You feel that I can't care, much?"
"It is horrible for me to feel it. Think of her when I came, so secure, so calm, so surrounded by love and appreciation. And now"—Valerie walked on, as if urged to motion by the controlled force of her own insistence. Was it an appeal to him that Imogen, dispossessed of the new love, might find again the old love opening to her? He clung to the hope, though with a sickening suspicion of its folly.
"By my coming, I have robbed her of everything," Valerie was saying, walking swiftly up the path and breathing as if with that slight difficulty—the sound of her breaths affected him with an almost intolerable sense of expectancy. "She isn't secure;—she isn't calm. She is warped;—her faiths are warped. Her friends are changed to her. She has lost you. It's as if I had shattered her life."