'You don't love this man. He doesn't love you.'
'What is that to you?' asked Helen.
'I can't think it of you; I can't bear to think it.'
'What is it to you?' she repeated, in a deadened voice.
'Why do you say that?' he took her up with controlled fury. 'How couldn't it but be a great deal to me? Haven't you been a great deal—for all our lives nearly? Do you mean that you're going to kick me out completely—because you are going to marry? What does it mean to me? I wish it could mean something to you of what it does to me. To give yourself—you—you—to a man who doesn't love you—whom you don't love—for money. Oh, I know we've always talked of that sort of thing as if it were possible—and perhaps it is—for a man. But when it comes to a woman—a woman one has cared for—looked up to—as I have to you—it's a different matter. One expects a different standard.'
'What standard do you expect from me?' asked Helen. There were tears, but tears of rage, in her voice.
'You know,' said Gerald, who also was struggling with an emotion that, rising, overcame his control, 'you know what I think of you—what I expect of you. A great match—a great man—something fitting for you—one could accept that; but this little American nonentity, this little American—barely a gentleman—whom you'd never have looked at if he hadn't money—a man who will make you ridiculous, a man who can't have a thought or feeling in common with you—it's not fit—it's not worthy; it smirches you; it's debasing.'
He had not turned to look at her while he spoke, perhaps did not dare to look. He knew that his anger, his more than anger, had no warrant, and that the words in which it cloaked itself—though he believed in all he said—were unjustifiable. But it was more than anger, and it must speak, must plead, must protest. He had no right to say these things, perhaps, but Helen should understand the more beneath, should understand that he was lost, bewildered, miserable; if Helen did not understand, what was to become of him? And now she stood there behind him, not speaking, not answering him, so that he was almost frightened and murmured on, half inaudibly: 'It's a wrong you do—to me—to our friendship, as well as to yourself.'
Helen now spoke, and the tone of her voice arrested his attention even before the meaning of her words reached him. It was a tone that he had never heard from her, and it was not so much that it made him feel that he had lost her as that it made him feel—strangely and penetratingly—that he had never known her.
'You say all this to me, Gerald, you who in all these years have never taken the trouble to wonder or think about me at all—except how I might amuse you or advise you, or help you.' These were Helen's words. 'Why should I go on considering you, who have never considered me?'