“She offered to show me your letters.”
“Compliments, nothing more.”
“But you must love her, or you couldn’t—you wouldn’t—” A burning flush scorched Margaret’s body.
“I never said that I....” Even with her he had always treated the word love as if it were a dangerous explosive, and he avoided touching it now, “that I cared for her in that way.”
“Then you do in another way?”
He glanced about like a trapped animal. “I am not a fool, am I? Why, I am old enough to be her father! Besides, I am not the only one anyway. She was living with a man when I met her, and he wasn’t the first. She isn’t bad, you know. It’s a kind of philosophy with her. She calls it self....”
“I know.” Margaret cut the phrase short. “I have heard what she calls it.” So it was all wasted! Nothing that she could do could lift the situation above the level of the commonplace, the merely vulgar. She was defrauded not only of happiness, but even of the opportunity to be generous. Her sacrifice was as futile as that girl’s passion. “But she is in love with you now,” she said.
“I suppose she is.” His tone had grown stubborn. “But how long would it last? In six months she would be leaving me for somebody else. Of course, I won’t see her again,” he added, with the manner of one who is conceding a reasonable point. Then, after a pause in which she made no response, his stubbornness changed into resentment. “Anybody would think that you are angry because I am not in love with her!” he exclaimed. “Anybody would think—but I don’t understand women!”
“Then you will not—you do not mean to leave me?” she asked; and her manner was as impersonal, she was aware, as if Winters had just given her notice.
“Leave you?” He glanced appreciatively round the room. “Where on earth could I go?”