“No,” said Damier, still facing her from his distance, “I do not love her. I have never needed to overlook anything.”
Plainly it was her turn to be astonished, thrown back upon herself.
“But, from the beginning, has that not been your meaning?”
“You, only, have been my meaning.”
He saw that her thought, in its disarray, could not pause upon his interpretation of these words. She had straightened herself, both hands on the chair-back, and her wide gaze, her parted lips, and the vivid wonder and surmise in her face made her look curiously young.
“You have, from the first, been so much with her—seemed to take so much interest in her—seemed so to understand her; she was so open—so intimate—“
“She is your daughter.”
“But that, I thought, added to the certainty: you must, I thought, love my daughter—“
He was forced to beat a retreat for a moment of disentanglement; and, suddenly, disentanglement seemed to demand a cutting sincerity.
“I don’t, in the very least, love Claire; I have never, in the very least, loved her; I have only been sorry for her.”