'I'm glad you can't. She is too good for such usage. No,' said Helen, holding her scales steadily, 'perfect frankness is the only way. If she knows that you really care for her—even if you are not romantic—if you can make her feel that the money—though a necessity—is secondary, and wouldn't have counted at all unless you had come to care, I should say that your chances are good—since you have reason to believe that she has fallen in love with you.'
'It's not as if I denied her anything I had to give, is it?' Gerald pondered on the point of conscience she put before him.
'You mean that you're incapable of caring more for any woman than for Althea?'
'Of course not. I care a great deal more for you,' said Gerald, again rather rueful under her probes. 'I only mean that I'm not likely to fall in love again, or anything of that sort. She can be quite secure about me. I'll be her devoted and faithful husband.'
'I think you care,' said Helen. 'I think you can make her happy.'
But Gerald now came and sat on the corner of the writing-table beside her, facing her, his back to the window. 'It's a tremendous thing to decide on, isn't it, Helen?'
She turned her eyes on him, and he looked at her with a gaze troubled and a little groping, as though he sought in her further elucidations; as though, for the first time, she had disappointed him a little.
'Is it?' she asked. 'Is marriage really a tremendous thing?'
'Well, isn't it?'
'I'm not sure. In one way, of course, it is. But people, perhaps, exaggerate the influence of their own choice on the results. You can't be sure of results, choose as carefully as you will; it's what comes after that decides them, I imagine—the devotion, the fidelity you speak of. And since you've found some one to whom you can promise those, some one wise and good and gentle, isn't that all that you need be sure of?'