'Yes, yes, of course,' Gerald hastened past her qualifications to the one liberating fact. 'Two people like you would have had to. But you didn't love him; you couldn't have come to love him. I haven't robbed you of a man you could have loved.'
She saw his immense relief. The joy of it was in his eyes and voice; and the thought of Franklin, of what she had not been able to do for Franklin, made it bitter to her that because she had not been able to save Franklin, Gerald should find relief.
'You couldn't have robbed me of him if there'd been any chance of that,' she said. 'If there had been any chance of my loving Franklin I would never have let him go. Don't be glad, don't show me that you are glad—because I didn't love him.'
'I can't help being glad, Helen,' he said.
She leaned her head on her hand, covering her eyes. While he was there, showing her that he was glad because she had not loved Franklin, she could not be kind, nor even just to him.
'Helen,' he said, 'I know what you are feeling; but will you listen to me?' She answered that she would listen to anything he had to say, and her voice had the leaden tone of impersonal charity.
'Helen,' Gerald said, 'I know how I've blundered. I see everything. But, with it all, seeing it all, I don't think that you are fair to me. I don't think it is fair if you can't see that I couldn't have thought of all these other possibilities—after what you'd told me—the other day. How could I think of anything, then, but the one thing—that you loved me and that I loved you, and that, of course, I must set my mistake right at once, set Althea free and come to you? I was very simple and very stupid; but I don't think it's fair not to see that I couldn't believe you'd really repulse me, finally, if you loved me.'
'You ought to have believed it,' Helen said, still with her covered eyes. 'That is what is most simple, most stupid in you. You ought to have felt—and you ought to feel now—that to a woman who could tell you what I did, everything is over.'
'But, Helen, that's my point,' ever so carefully and patiently he insisted. 'How can it be over when I love you—if you still love me?'
She put down her hand now and looked up at him and she saw his hope; not yet dead; sick, wounded, perplexed, but, in his care and patience, vigilant. And it was with a sad wonder for the truth of her own words, that she said, looking up at the face dear beyond all telling for so many years, 'I don't want you, Gerald. I don't want your love. I'm not blaming you. I am fair to you. I see that you couldn't help it, and that it was my fault really. But you are asking for something that isn't there any longer.'