“And if I have courage enough to ask it, you have courage enough to answer me? You love him, Eppie?”
He had come to her, his eyes threatening her, beseeching her, adoring her, all at once. She saw it all—all that he felt, and the furious pity that was deeper than his own deep pain. She could resent nothing, deny nothing. As she had said, he was so near.
She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping him from her, yet accepting him as near, and then all that she found to say—but it was in a voice that brought a rapt pallor to his face—was, “Dear Jim.”
He understood her—all that she accepted, all that she avowed. Her hand was that of a comrade in misfortune. She forgave brutality from a heart as stricken as his. She forgave even his cruelly clear seeing of her own desperate case—a seeing that had revealed to her that it was indeed very desperate. But if she too was stricken, she too was resolute, and she could do no more for him than look with him at the truth. Their eyes recognized so many likenesses in each other.
He took the hand at last in both his own, looking down at it, pressing it hard.
“Poor darling,” he said.
“No, Jim.”
“Yes; even if he loves you.”
“Even if he doesn’t love me—and he does love me in a strange, unwilling way; but even if he doesn’t love me,—as you and I mean love,—I am not piteous.”
“Even if he loves you, you are piteous.” All his savagery had fallen from him. His quiet was like the slow dropping of tears.