“There can be no doubt about your frankness,” he said with pinched lips.
“There’s no longer any reason for not being frank.”
He picked up his hat, and studiously considered its lining; then he took the gloves he had laid in it, and drew them thoughtfully through his hands. She thought: “Thank God, he’s going!”
But he set the hat and gloves down on a table, and moved a little nearer to her. His face looked as ravaged as a reveller’s at daybreak.
“You—leave positively nothing to the imagination!” he murmured.
“I told you it was useless—” she began; but he interrupted her: “Nothing, that is—if I believed you.” He moistened his lips again, and tapped them with his handkerchief. Again she had a whiff of the eau de Cologne. “But I don’t!” he proclaimed. “Too many memories ... too many ... proofs, my dearest ...” He stopped, smiling somewhat convulsively. She saw that he imagined the smile would soothe her.
She remained silent, and he began once more, as if appealing to her against her own verdict: “I know better, Lizzie. In spite of everything, I know you’re not that kind of woman.”
“I took your money—”
“As a favour. I knew the difficulties of your position.... I understood completely. I beg of you never again to allude to—all that.” It dawned on her that anything would be more endurable to him than to think he had been a dupe—and one of two dupes! The part was not one that he could conceive of having played. His pride was up in arms to defend her, not so much for her sake as for his own. The discovery gave her a baffling sense of helplessness; against that impenetrable self-sufficiency all her affirmations might spend themselves in vain.
“No man who has had the privilege of being loved by you could ever for a moment....”