"As far as possible from my idea."
"Don't you want me to belong to you?"
"As I belong to you."
"That sounds well, but it isn't what could happen. The fact is, Donald, that I want to belong to you—want to be owned by you and to lose myself in you. And it's that I'm fighting."
She felt the look he was bending upon her, and glowed and colored under it, but did not dare to turn her eyes to meet it. Said he: "Why fight it? Why not be happy?"
"Ah, but that's just it," cried she. "I shouldn't be happy. And I should make you miserable. The idea of a career—the idea that's rooted deep in me and can't ever be got out, Donald; it would torment me. You couldn't kill it, no matter how much you loved me. I'd yield for the time. Then, I'd go back—or, if I didn't, I'd be wretched and make you wish you'd never seen me."
"I understand," said he. "I don't believe it, but I understand."
"You think I'm deceiving myself, because you saw me wasting my life, playing the idler and the fool, pretending I was working toward a career when I was really making myself fit for nothing but to be Stanley Baird's mistress."
"And you're still deceiving yourself. You won't see the truth."
"No matter," said she. "I must go on and make a career—some kind of a career."