But Roger held his ground stubbornly. “I know it is caprice,” he said. “I’m not clean crazy with vanity, Rix. But even if you were in earnest—as much in earnest as you pretend—perhaps as you think—still, that wouldn’t change things. We can’t be anything more to each other than friends. In any other relation we’d be worse than useless to each other. You need a man of your own sort. If I tied up with any woman it’d be with one of my sort.”
“I don’t understand,” said she. “It wouldn’t be worth while for you to explain—for I couldn’t understand. All I know is, we love each other.”
“But marriage is a matter of temperaments. If you had less will I might compel you to go my way, to learn to like and lead my kind of life. If I had less will I might adapt myself to you—and become a comfortable, contemptible rich woman’s nonentity of a husband. But neither of us can change—so, we part.”
“I’ve thought of those things,” said she, quiet and sweet and unconvinced. “I’ve gone over and over them, day and night. But—Chang, I can’t give you up.”
“That is to say, you don’t care what becomes of me so long as you get your way.”
She did not respond to his argumentative mood, but took refuge in woman’s impregnable citadel. “I trust my instinct—what it tells me is best for us.”
“You don’t realize it,” argued he desperately, “but you count on my love for you making me weak enough to adapt myself to your kind of life.”
“I count on our love’s making us both happy.”
“You wish to marry me simply because you think I’m necessary to your happiness?”
“Yes—Chang. You are necessary to my happiness.”