"You got Crossley to do it?"
"No. He had done it before I saw him. He had just promised Moldini and was cursing himself as 'weak and soft.' But that means nothing. You may be sure he did it because Moldini convinced him it was a good speculation."
She was radiant. She had not vanity enough where he was concerned to believe that he deeply cared, that her joy would give him pain because it meant forgetfulness of him. Nor was she much impressed by the expression of his eyes. And even as she hurt him, she made him love her the more; for he appreciated how rare was the woman who, in such circumstances, does not feed her vanity with pity for the poor man suffering so horribly because he is not to get her precious self.
It flashed upon her why he had not offered to help her. "There isn't anybody like you," said she, with no explanation of her apparent irrelevancy.
"Don't let Moldini see that you know," said he, with characteristic fine thoughtfulness for others in the midst of his own unhappiness. "It would deprive him of a great pleasure."
He was about to go. Suddenly her eyes filled and, opening the outer door, she drew him in. "Donald," she said, "I love you. Take me in your arms and make me behave."
He looked past her; his arms hung at his sides. Said he: "And to-night I'd get a note by messenger saying that you had taken it all back. No, the girl in the photograph—that was you. She wasn't made to be MY wife. Or I to be her husband. I love you because you are what you are. I should not love you if you were the ordinary woman, the sort who marries and merges. But I'm old enough to spare myself—and you—the consequences of what it would mean if we were anything but strangers to each other."
"Yes, you must keep away—altogether. If you didn't, I'd be neither the one thing nor the other, but just a poor failure."
"You'll not fail," said he. "I know it. It's written in your face." He looked at her. She was not looking at him, but with eyes gazing straight ahead was revealing that latent, inexplicable power which, when it appeared at the surface, so strongly dominated and subordinated her beauty and her sex. He shut his teeth together hard and glanced away.
"You will not fail," he repeated bitterly. "And that's the worst of it."