"Is that what you have come to talk about?" asked Nadine.
"That is a very foolish question, Nadine. You have quibbled and chattered so incessantly that sometimes I think you can do nothing else. You might retort with a tu quoque, but it would not be true. I was capable anyhow of falling in love with you, I regret to say."
Seymour paused a moment, and then raised his eyes, which had been steadily regarding the masterpieces of Antoinette, to Nadine.
"I am wrong: I don't regret it," he said.
Suddenly his sincerity and his reality reached and touched Nadine. He stepped out of the background, so to speak, and stood firmly and authentically beside her.
"I regret it very much," she said, "and I am as powerless to help you, as I am to help myself."
"You seem to have been helping yourself pretty freely," said he in a sudden exasperation. But she, usually so quick to flare into flame, felt no particle of resentment.
"There is no good in saying that," she said.
"I did not mean there to be. Good? I did not come down here to do you good."
"Why did you come? Just to reproach me?"