“And perhaps,” Letty suggested, “he’s too tender-hearted.”
“That’s part of it. He is tender-hearted. Besides that, his position is grotesque—a man with whom two women are in love. To one of them he’s been nominally married, while to the other he’s bound by every tie of honor. No wonder he doesn’t see his way. If he moves toward the one he hurts the other—a man to whom it’s agony to hurt a fly.”
“Does the other girl still feel the way she did?”
“She’s killing herself. She’s breaking her heart. Nobody knows it but him and her—and even he doesn’t take it in. But she is.”
“I suppose she thinks I’m something awful.”
“Does it matter to you what she thinks?”
“I don’t want her to hate me.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t say she did that. She feels that, considering everything, you might have acted with more decision.”
“But he won’t let me.”
“And he never will, if you wait for that.”