"You are only unfortunate."
"Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier."
She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to throw heaven's twilight across it. A woman's history, you know: certain chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.
"Did you love the man?" he asked. "You say you love no one now."
"Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's daughter. No. I did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate him, if I did not despise him."
"Can you be deceived in love?" said Richard, more to himself than to her.
"Yes. When we're young we can be very easily deceived. If there is such a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed it. Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:—and then it's too late! we can't have him."
"Singular!" murmured Richard, "she says just what my father said."
He spoke aloud: "I could forgive you if you had loved him."
"Don't be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?"