"How did you know it?" he said. He was leaning against the piano watching her; she stood with her hands folded, and pressed so tightly together that he could see the force of the pressure.
"Never mind how; but quite simply and naturally. I said to myself that I would try to become interested in you, even if only to a small degree; I would do everything in my power to forward it. It would be an acquired interest; still, acquired interests can be deep. People can become interested in music, in pictures, in sports, in that way; why not, then, in persons also, since they are more human?"
"That is the very reason—because they are too human," he answered.
But she did not heed. "I have studied you; I have tried to find the good in you; I have tried to believe in you, to idealize you. I have given every thought that I could control to you, and to you alone, for two long months," she said, passionately, unlocking her hands, reddened with their pressure against each other, and turning away.
"It has been a failure?"
"Complete."
"And if you had succeeded?" he asked, folding his arms as he leaned against the piano.
"I should have been glad and happy. I should never have seen you again, of course; but at least the miserable old feeling would have been laid at rest."
"And its place filled by another as miserable!"
"Oh no; it could never have been that," she said, with an emphasis of scorn.