"If you wait for me to insult you, Alice, you will wait a long time. I should be as likely to insult my own mother."
"I have done nothing to deserve this," she sobbed, frantic with confusion.
"You deserve more a thousand times than my devotion ever can bring you. But all it can ever bring, from the moment I kissed you, is yours."
Her eyes blazed through her tears. In her helpless wrath she stamped her foot. "You are shameless. I detest your conduct. If you are going to the house I will stay here. If you are not, let me go."
He met her denunciation with steadiness. "Nothing you can say will anger me."
"You mean you have no respect for me." She spoke so fast she could scarcely frame the words. "Why don't you say so? Are you too cowardly?"
The imputation stung him. He seemed to explode inwardly. "I have nothing but respect for you, Alice," he insisted with terrifying energy, "but this thing must be fought out----"
She attempted to speak. His words drowned her. "I want to say nothing that will wound or offend you. You make it very hard for me to speak at all----"
"You have no right to speak----"
"But, Alice," he exclaimed, throwing all his force into the words, "you don't love that man. That is why I speak. If you did love him, if even he loved you, I could be silent."