"I haven't decided. That depends on many things. She thinks I'm in love with you."
They had come to a piece of rough ground sown with boulders and fallen trees, through which their horses picked their way carefully. Rita Cheyne watched the broad back of her companion with a new expression in her eyes. He had never seemed so difficult to read as at this moment, but she thought that she understood and she found something admirable in his reticence and in his loyalty to his wife. In a moment the trail widened again as they reached the levels, and her horse found its way alongside his.
"She thinks you're in love with me? What does she know about love? What do I know about it? or you? Love is a condition of mind, contagious in extreme youth, but only mildly infectious later in life. Why should any one risk his whole future on a condition of mind? You feel sick but you don't marry your doctor or your trained nurse because he helps to cure you. Why don't you? Simply because you get well and then discover that your doctor has a weak chin or disagreeable finger ends. When you get well of love, if you marry to cure it, there's nothing left but Reno. I don't believe in love. I simply deny its existence—just as I refuse to believe in ghosts or a personal Devil. I resent the idea that your wife should believe you're in love with me. You find pleasure in my society because I don't rub you the wrong way, and I like you because I find less trouble in getting on with you than with anybody else."
"You're a cold-blooded proposition, Rita," said Wray smiling.
"Yes—if it's cold-blooded to think—and to say what one thinks. But I'm not so cold-blooded that I could marry one man when I liked another—a man with whom I had no bond of sympathy. Cheyne was the nearest approach I could find to the expression of a youthful ideal—people told me I was in love with him—so I married him. Of course, if I had had any sense—but what's the use? I've learned something since then. To-day I would marry—not for love, but for something finer—not because of a condition of mind or a condition of body, but because of a stronger, more enduring relation, like that between the lime and sand that build a house. I'd marry a man because I wanted to give him my friendship and because I couldn't get on without his friendship, and if the house we built would not endure, then no marriage will endure."
"You mean, Rita," Wray interrupted with sober directness, "that you'd marry me if you could?"
She flushed mildly. "I didn't say so. I said I would marry for friendship because it's the biggest thing in the world. I don't mind saying I'd marry you. It's quite safe, because, obviously, I can't."
Jeff looked at her uncertainly and then laughed noisily.
"Rita, you're a queer one! I never know when the seriousness stops and the fun begins."
She smiled and frowned at the same time.