This was no good.
"You would have been wrong, then," he said. "I should have thought so too till just lately. But I have just found out that I never loved before. I—I did everything else, but I did not love."
"You loved Daisy, do you mean?" she asked.
He flamed up for a moment.
"Ah, there is no good in saying that," he said, sharply. "What can be the use of it? I met the woman—there is only one—and she led me to believe that she cared for me. And when I told her that I loved her she said she had thought I was a gentleman and a friend."
Jeannie felt her heart melt within her.
"Yes, yes, I am sorry," she said.
"That is no good, I am afraid," said he. "You have got to tell me why you did it. We are man and woman, you and I. I cannot believe you did it out of sheer wantonness, from the desire to make me miserable, and, I am afraid, to some extent, to make Miss Daisy miserable. I don't see what you were to gain by it. Also you risked something since you were engaged all the time to Braithwaite. And the only thing I can think of is that for some reason you wished to get between Miss Daisy and myself. I suppose you thought I had been a bad lot—I daresay I had—and did not want me to marry her. But wasn't that an infernally cruel way of doing it?"
Jeannie said nothing, but after a long silence she looked at him.
"Have you finished?" she asked. "I have nothing to say to you, no explanation to give."