He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.
She answered nothing.
"I'll make you love me again."
"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you to love?"
Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"
"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous; but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved, because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."
Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.
"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know—you are hard on me."
"I see no sign of nobility—towards anyone—in your life," Amabel answered as dispassionately as before.
Sir Hugh walked up and down.