"Oh, but not as straight as I can! I can see that a noble character doesn't always distinguish clearly between love and kindness, or between kindness and loyalty, or between loyalty and self-sacrifice, and that the higher the heart, the more likely it is to impose on itself. No one is so easily deceived as to love and loving as the man or the woman who's truly generous."
"If I was truly generous—"
"I know what you are," he said, shortly.
"Then if you know what I am you must know, too, that I couldn't do other than care for a man who's given up so much for my sake."
"You couldn't do other than admire him. You couldn't do other than be grateful to him. You probably couldn't do other than want to stand by him through thick and thin—"
"Well, then?"
"But that's not love."
"If it isn't love it's so near to it—"
"Exactly—which is what I'm saying. It's so near it that you don't know the difference, and won't know the difference till—till the real thing affords you the contrast."
I did my best to be scornful.