"So that my answer has to be final."
"I don't see that. Love is only one of the many motives for marriage—and not, as I understand it, the highest one. The divorce courts are strewn with the wrecks of marriages made for love. Those that stand the test of life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of the more solid—and worthier—motives."
"Then I don't know what they are."
"I could explain them to you if you'd let me. As for love—if it's needed at all—I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do for two. I'm over fifty years of age. It never occurred to me that you could—care about me—as you might have cared for some one else. But as far as I can see, there's no one else. If there was, perhaps I shouldn't persist."
She looked up with sudden determination.
"If there was any one else, you—would consider that as settling the question?"
"I might. I shouldn't bind myself. It would depend."
"Then I'll tell you; there is some one else." The words caused her to flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them. "That is, there might have been."
"What do you mean by—might have been?"
"I mean that, though I don't say I've ever—loved—any man, there was a man I might have loved, if it had been possible."