“Mr. Pell,” she said, “you need have no apprehensions. I do not wish to marry you. I am very, very sorry if you have fallen in love with me.... And I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you.”
“For me?” he said, bristling.
“For you. You are the most pathetic man I have ever known.”
“Pathetic!”
She nodded. “I have no experience with life,” she said, gently, “but certain knowledge is born in most of us. We know that life—real life—consists only of suffering and happiness. All other things are only incidents. All the good in life is derived either from sorrow or joy. If you pass through life without experiencing either, you have not lived. And, Mr. Pell, the greatest source of grief and of happiness is love. I do not know how I know this, but you may take it as the truth. I have never loved, but if I felt I never should love, I think I should despair. I want to love some man, to give him my life, to make him my life. I want him to be my world.”
“It is useless to argue,” said Evan Pell.
Carmel flamed.
“Argue!” she said. “Mr. Pell, let me tell you this, and as you said to me a moment ago, it is final. If you and I were the sole survivors upon the earth, I could do nothing but pity you. I am not sure I could do that. You are abnormal, and the abnormal is repulsive.... You rather fancy yourself. You are all ego. Please try to believe that you are of no importance to anybody. You are negligible. Whether you live or die can be of no importance to any living creature.... You are accustomed to look down upon those who surround you. Don’t you see how people look down upon you? You think yourself superior. That is absurd. You are nothing but a dry running little machine, which can go out of order and be thrown upon the junk pile at any time without causing the least annoyance to anybody. Why, Mr. Pell, if you should die to-night, who would care? What difference would it make? What do you contribute to this world to make you of value to it?”
He had turned and was regarding her with grave interest. Manifestly her words did not humiliate nor anger him, but they interested him as an argument, a statement of a point of view.
“Go on, please,” he said. “Elucidate.”