“I’m not making love to you. I guess I’m trying to reason things out aloud.”
“Using me as a wall to bounce your ball against.”
He smiled without mirth. “Something like that. I know I love Andree, but yet I can see myself in love with you.... I’ve asked you before if a man can be in love with two girls at the same time.”
“I don’t know. Not in the same way, anyhow.”
“It would be different. If I did love you I would be thinking about marriage all the time. It would mean marriage. I would want you for my wife.... But Andree—she doesn’t mean that. At least marriage doesn’t figure in it. I can’t explain exactly, but it’s as if there never had been such a thing in the world as marriage—only love.”
“I’m not sure but that is better. Even if I am American I don’t know but I’d rather have that kind.”
“Andree isn’t just an adventure, an incident. She’s more important than that—the most important thing that ever happened to me.... I can’t explain. I can feel it, but I can’t express what it is. It isn’t that I couldn’t marry her, nor that I wouldn’t be mighty lucky to have her for a wife.... It seems, somehow, that marriage doesn’t signify—isn’t necessary.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”
“I don’t, either. I’m trying to find out.... But I do know that I don’t want to hurt her or make her sorry she has loved me.”
“How about me?” she asked, suddenly.