“That is part of it. I admit it. But—and I am sincere when I say it—I don’t know whether I want to marry her. I love her and she loves me.... She would be a wonderful wife—and yet, love and all, I don’t know whether I want to marry her.”
“You are just trying to deceive yourself. Either you don’t love her at all....”
“Would you marry a woman who had done what Andree has done?”
“It would depend on the woman—and upon how much I loved her.... You can’t generalize about that. It is a matter that nobody can decide except for himself in a particular instance. I do think, if I were a man, that I could marry your Andree without a thought....”
“But to take her out of her world—away from Paris where she is as natural and unconscious as the birds in the trees—and set her down for life in Detroit ... to be stared at and lied about and suspected ... it would make her miserable.”
“Would it make her as miserable as to lose you altogether? If she had you and your love, no matter what unpleasant things were about, wouldn’t that be better than to be left behind here alone?”
“Yes,” he said, honestly. “Yes.”
She looked at him a moment, studying his face, which was set and anxious and overcast, his eyes, which were dull and brooding, and a wave of compassion surged up within her.
“It has made you miserable,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I deserve to be miserable.”