"That you'd forgive her."
His body bounded to an upright attitude, his hands thrust deep into pockets. "No." If the word had been louder it would have been a shout. "I shall never forgive her."
There was no change in her sweet reasonableness. "I don't see what you gain by that."
"I gain this much—that I don't do it."
"I still can't see that it makes your situation any better, while it makes hers a good deal worse."
"If hers is worse, mine is better. The woman deliberately wrecked my life after I'd been kind to her—for years."
"The poor thing didn't do it deliberately, Mr. Walker. She did it because she couldn't help it—because she loved you so."
He shook himself impatiently. "Ah, what kind of love is that?"
The audacity of her response—the curious audacity of shyness—seemed to him extraordinary only when, later, he thought it over. "I dare say it isn't a very high kind of love—but there was no question of its being that—from the first. Was there?"
"All the more reason then why she should have kept where she belonged."