"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that—with women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me years—all these years, till I'm thirty-three—to see that there's a perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression of any kind of art. And I've found it."
He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.
"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."
"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than I. That's Conquest."
"Oh!"
In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.
"Conquest saw what I didn't—till it was too late."
He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.
"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.
"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you. I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away, and——"