She said the words with perfect coldness.
"I was different."
"Different!" he echoed absently, and then checked himself. "Don't say that," he said. "Don't think it. It won't do. Why shouldn't you be as good and happy as any woman who ever lived?"
She remained silent. But her silence only stirred him afresh.
"It is a bad beginning," he said. "I know it is because I have tried it. I have said to myself that I was different from other men, too."
He ended with an impatient movement and a sound half like a groan.
"Here I am," he cried, "telling myself it is better to battle against the strongest feeling of my life because I am 'different'—because there is a kind of taint in my blood. I don't begin as other men do by hoping. I begin by despairing, and yet I can't give up. How it will end, God knows!"
"I understand you better than you think," she said.
Something in her voice startled him.