"You are you, and I am I," she protested. "It—it is impossible, Grantley."
His face assumed its old obstinate squareness as he heard her.
"I don't want that," she murmured. "I'll try to be friends. We can understand one another as friends, make allowances, give and forgive. Friendship's charitable. Let's be friends, Grantley."
"You have no love left for me?" he asked, passing by her protests.
"For months past I've hated you."
"I know that. And you have no love left for me?"
She looked at him again, with fear and shrinking in her eyes.
"Have you forgotten what I did? No, you can't have forgotten! How can you wish me to love you now? It would be horrible for both of us. You may forgive me, as I do you—what I may have to forgive; but how can we be lovers again? How can we—with that in the past?"
"The past is the past," he said calmly.
She walked away from him a little. When she came back in a minute or so, he saw that she was in strong agitation.