“And you have helped me—no one has helped me more.”
“Have I helped you to understand yourself—to understand what love means? That is sometimes the last thing that women understand.”
“I think that you helped me to understand myself, and the result is, pain—self-reproach.”
She took the case in her hands.
[page [326].
“There is no need for either, Betsy. There is no need for pain, even though the one whom you loved showed himself to be unworthy of you. Ah, my dear, if you mourn until you find a man worthy of your love, you will pass a melancholy lifetime. Listen to me, my sweet one, while I tell you what was my dream. When I came here for the first time and found you in the midst of danger, surrounded by unscrupulous men—men who were as incapable of appreciating your real nature as—as—well, as incapable as was your father; when I perceived that you were like a white lily that slowly withers when brought out of the gladness of the garden to be stifled by the air of a dark room; when I perceived that, in order to avoid the shame of facing the public from the platform of a concert-room, you might be led to give your hand to some one who would lead you into misery and dishonour—then, for her sake—for the sake of the angel whom I loved in my boyhood and whom I love now in the autumn of my life—I made up my mind that I would try to help you.”
“And you did—indeed, you did help me. Ah, I should have known what you meant—I might have known how good and unselfish you were. ’Tis true that sometimes I fancied—something like what you have told me now. Yes, I felt that you were too fond of me to love me. That sounds absurd, but I think you understand what I mean.”
“You have put the sentiment into the best phrase: I was too fond of you to be in love with you or to look for you to love me with the love of a girl for her lover. I wondered who it was you did love in that way, and I believed that the truth was revealed to me. I saw Dick Sheridan in the same room with you, and I saw the light that came into your face.”
“Alas—alas!”