'I wish, Alice, I could tell you how glad I am to have you back: it seems like heaven to see you again. You look so nice, so true, so sweet, so perfect. There never was anyone so perfect as you, Alice.'
'Cecilia dear, you shouldn't talk to me like that; it is absurd. Indeed,
I don't think it is quite right.'
'Not quite right,' replied the cripple sadly; 'what do you mean? Why is it wrong—why should it be wrong for me to love you?'
'I don't mean to say that it is wrong; you misunderstand me; but—but—well, I don't know how to explain myself, but—'
'I know, I know, I know,' said Cecilia, and her nervous sensitivity revealed thoughts in Alice's mind—thoughts of which Alice herself was not distinctly conscious, just as a photograph exposes irregularities in the texture of a leaf that the naked eye would not perceive.
'If Harding were to speak to you so, you wouldn't think it wrong.'
Alice's face flushed a little, and she said, with a certain resoluteness in her voice, 'Cecilia, I wish you wouldn't talk to me in this way. You give me great pain.'
'I am sorry if I do, but I can't help it. I am jealous of the words that are spoken to you, of the air you breathe, of the ground you walk upon. How, then, can I help hating that man?'
'I do not wish to argue this point with you, Cecilia, nor am I sure that I understand it. There is no one I like better than you, dear, but that we should be jealous of each other is absurd.'
'For you perhaps, but not for me.' Cecilia looked at Alice reproachfully, and at the end of a long and morose silence she said: