“No, no; how can you expect me to make myself at ease in that way! I ought not to be here at all; it is foolish and wrong to have come to you. But I couldn’t believe it; I was driven to come and ask you to contradict it. And you only tell me it is true; that you thought I knew it! I don’t understand how you can be so cruel.”
“Now let us talk,” said Lacour, tapping his knee with the paper knife. “Why should you be so surprised at what you hear? You know all about my position; we talked it over in full that day at the Museum, didn’t we? I was absolutely frank with you; I concealed nothing, and I pretended nothing. We liked each other; that we had both of us found out, and there was no need to put it into words. We found, too, that there was a danger of our growing indispensable to each other, a state of things which had to be met rationally, and—well, put an end to. Had we been at liberty to marry, I should certainly have asked you to be my wife; as there was no possibility of that, we adopted the wisest alternative, and agreed not to meet again. I cannot tell you how I admired your behaviour; so few girls are capable of talking in a calm and reasonable spirit of difficulties such as these. Any one watching us would have thought we were discussing some affair of the most every-day kind. As I say, you were simply admirable. It grieves me to see you breaking down so after all; it is not of a piece with the rest of your behaviour; it makes a flaw in what dramatists call the situation. Don’t you agree with me? Have I said anything but the truth?”
Rhoda listened, with her eyes fixed despairingly on the ground; her hands holding the edge of the sofa gave her the appearance of one shrinking back from a precipice. When he had finished his statement, she faced him for the first time.
“What would you have thought if I had gone at once and married somebody else?”
“I should have heartily wished you every happiness.”
“Should you have thought I did right?” she asked with persistence, clinging still to the edge of the sofa.
“On the whole, perhaps not.”
“You mean,” she said, not without bitterness, a fresh tear stealing to her cheek, “that you believe in my feeling for you, and wish me to understand that yours for me hadn’t the same seriousness?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. You must remember that I am not defending this step of mine, only showing you that I have not violated any compact between us. We were both left free, that’s all.”
“Then you don’t care for her!” the girl exclaimed, with mingled satisfaction and reproof.