"Of course I didn't believe it. I'm not a fool if I am an ass. But if I had believed it," I added passionately, "it would have made no difference. I'd have come after you if you'd gone off with twenty Georges."
"Well, there's only one," she said, "and I did go off with him."
"It makes no difference."
"We left Richmond at ten o'clock yesterday, and we've been here ever since."
"What does that matter?"
"You mean it doesn't matter that I came away with George and spent twenty-four hours?"
"I mean that nothing matters—not if you'd spent twenty-four years."
"I suppose it doesn't," she responded quietly, and there was a curious remoteness, a hollowness in the sound of the words. "When one comes to see things as they are, nothing really matters. It is all just the same."
Her face looked unsubstantial and wan in the firelight, and so ethereal, so fleshless, appeared her figure, that it seemed to me I could see through it to the shining of the flames before which she stood.
"I can't talk, Sally," I said, "I am not good at words, I believe I'm more than half a fool as George has just told me—but—but—I want you—I've always wanted you—I've never in my heart wanted anything in the world but you—"