"I mean that I think it's tiresome. I have only let it go on as long as it has to please you; you must know that. I should have told him long ago, only you wouldn't let me—don't you remember? You have made me promise twice not to tell him."
"Because I thought you would come to your senses."
"I have come to them—now! The difficulty with you is, Margaret, that you think it will hurt him. But it won't hurt him at all, he doesn't care about it. He never did really care for me in the least."
"And if you don't care for him, as you say, may I ask how your engagement was formed?"
Garda laughed. "I don't wonder you ask! I'll tell you, I did care for him then. For some time before that night on the barren I had been thinking about him more and more, and I ended by thinking of nothing but just that one idea—how queer it would be, and how—how exciting, if I could only make him change a little; make him do as I wanted him to do. You know how cool he is, how quiet; I think it was that that tempted me, I wanted to see if I could. And, besides, I did care for him then; I liked him ever so much. I can't imagine what has become of the feeling; but it was certainly there at the time. Well, when you're lost on a barren all night, everything's different, you can say what you feel. And that's what I did; or at least I let him see it, I let him see how much I had been thinking about him, how much I liked him. I am afraid I told him in so many words," added the girl, after a moment's pause. "I only say 'afraid' on your account; on my own, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't say it if it was true."
Then, in answer, not to any words from Margaret, but to some slight movement of hers, "You don't believe it," she went on; "you don't believe I cared for him. He believed me, at any rate; he couldn't help it! At that moment I cared for him more than I cared for anybody in the world, and he saw that I did; it was easy enough to see. So that was the way of it. We came back engaged. And I did like him so much!—isn't it odd? I thought him wonderful. I don't suppose he has changed. But I have. He is probably wonderful still; but I don't care about him any more. And that is what I cannot understand—that he has not seen in all this time how different I am, has not seen how completely the feeling, whatever it was, that I had for him has gone. It seems to me that anybody not blind ought to have seen it long ago, for it didn't last but a very little while. And then, too, not to have seen it since Lucian came back!"
"He wouldn't allow himself to think such things of you."
"Now you are angry with me," said Garda, not turning her head, but putting up one hand caressingly on Margaret's arm. "Why should you be angry? What have I done but change? Can I help changing? I don't do it; it does itself; it happens. You needn't try to tell me that one love, if a true one, lasts forever, because it's nothing of the kind. Look at second marriages. I really cared for Evert. And now I don't care for him. But I don't see that I am to blame for either the one or the other; people don't care for people because they try to, but because it comes in spite of them; and it's the same way when it stops. I acknowledge, Margaret, that you are one of the kind to care once and forever. But there are very few women like you, I am sure."
She turned as she said this, in order to look up at her friend; then she sprang from her place on the rug and stood beside her, her attitude was almost a protecting one. "Oh," she said, "how I hate the people who make you so unhappy!"
"No one does that," said Margaret. She rose.