“Not grateful?”
“I mean, I’m not glad to owe my life to you.”
“But I haven’t asked––”
“No. Not directly.” He hesitated a moment. “It’s like this: If a man had saved my life, I could pay him. There would be a clasp of the hand, and a look from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn, or do him some service. Or––there are other ways. There’s Pete’s way and Jim’s way––of paying. But I can’t pay you in any of the ways I could pay a man. And I can’t pay in the only way a woman knows.”
“Don’t,” she cried. “Don’t, please!”
She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally. He must try another method. There followed a long silence, while he tried to frame a speech that would tell her, and would not hurt too much; for now, strangely, he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put himself in a false light before her––to be misunderstood. At last he leaned toward her––forced her to meet his gaze.
“Could you––if you had ever loved one man with all your heart and soul––held him as dear to you as life––dearer than life itself––without whom life would be impossible––could you ever love another?”
For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap that he had set for her. “Yes” would cheapen the quality and deny the finality of her love for him; “no” would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she saw shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.
“You see, you dare not answer that,” he went on. “I suppose I ought to tell you the story. But I won’t. It’s long, and not a pretty story at all. But this much I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to give. She threw it away––and laughed at me. I have nothing more.”