"You do well to change the terms," he answered, with unsparing bitterness, "it's nothing but will to-day, whatever it may once have been. I don't believe about your not daring; I don't, in fact, believe—that is, fully—anything you have said."
"Why, then, should I stay here talking longer?" She left the place and entered the orange grove, which she was obliged to pass through on her way to the house.
But he overtook her, he stepped in front and barred the way. "You have been remarkably skilful. I demanded an explanation, I was evidently going to make trouble. So you gave me this one: you said that you had, unfortunately for yourself, begun to love me, that was the explanation of everything; you threw me this to stop me, like a bone to a dog, so that you could get comfortably away. But I have this to tell you: if you had really loved me, you couldn't have argued quite so well! And you couldn't go now, either, so self-complacently, leaving me here in my pain."
"So be it," she said. She looked through the blossoming aisles to the right, to the left, as if in search of some rescuer, some one.
"But what does a woman like you know of love, after all—real love?" he went on, with angry scorn. "As a general thing, the better she is, the less she knows. And I have never denied that you were good, Margaret."
She moved to pass him.
"Not yet. You have reasoned the whole case out too well, there was rather too much reason; a lawyer couldn't have done it better."
"I have had time to think of the reasons. How often each day do you suppose I have gone over everything—over and over? And how many days have there been in these long years?"
"It isn't the time. It's your nature."
"Very well. It's my nature."