'Could you change a man, if you gave yourself to him? Could you drive out his devil, and make a new man of him? Could you give him a new life, a new heart, a new character?'
'I should have no such hopes. My eyes would be quite open.' Her thoughts were on Beaufort Chance.
'No, but couldn't you?' he urged, with a wistful persistence. 'If you knew the worst of him and would still look for something good—something you could love and could use to make the rest better? Couldn't you make him cease being what he hated being? Couldn't you have a power greater than the power of the enemy in him? If you loved him, I mean.'
'How could I love him?' she asked wonderingly.
'If he loved you?'
'What does such a man mean by love?' she murmured scornfully.
'I wonder if you could do anything like that,' he went on. 'Women have, I suppose. Could you?'
'Oh, don't talk about the thing. I hope I may have courage to throw it aside.'
He started a little. 'Ah, you mean—— No, I was thinking of something else.'
'And how could such a woman as I am make any man better?' She smiled in a faint ridicule of the idea; but she ceased to think of leaving him, and sat down by the table. For the moment he seemed to pay little attention to where she was or what she did; he spoke to her indeed, but his air was absent and his eyes aloof.