“With any one else it would be just sympathy,” she said, “but with you there’s more than that. It’s because I care, that I expect more and demand more. Other men can do the small, cowardly, mean things that people do, and find excuses for, but not you. I could make excuses for them too, but I must never have to make excuses for you. You’re better than that, you’re yourself, and you do what’s true to yourself and stand on that. You’ve got to do and be the best. Maybe it won’t be what you want or what’s most comfortable, but that mustn’t matter to you. If you’re not to be happy that mustn’t matter either. What pleases you and me mustn’t matter if it’s not the thing for a man like you to do. You can’t shirk your responsibilities. You can’t stick to something you’ve done just while it’s pleasant and then, when it’s hard, throw it up. Lots of people do that, thousands of them. Just as you said now—hundreds of men do what you have done and go scott free. That’s for them to do if they want to, but not for you. Let them drop down if they want, that’s no reason why you should. Let them go on living any way that’s agreeable to them, you know what you ought to do and you must do it. It doesn’t matter about them, or the world, or what anybody says. The only thing that matters is that the thing you know in your heart is the thing that’s true for you.”
“You expect too much of weak human nature,” he said.
“No,” she answered, “I don’t. I only expect what you can do.”
He turned and looked at her.
“Then I’m to live for the rest of my life with a wife I don’t care for, separated from the woman I love? What is there in that to keep a man’s heart alive?”
“The knowledge that we love each other. That’s a good deal, I think.”
It was the first time she had said in words that she loved him. There was no trace of embarrassment or consciousness on her face; instead she seemed singularly calm and steadfast, much less moved than he. Her words shook him to the soul. He turned his eyes from her face and grasping for her hand, clasped it, and pressed it to his heart, and to his lips, then loosed it and rose to his feet, saying, as if to himself,
“Yes, that’s a good deal.”
There was silence between them for some minutes, neither moving, both looking out at the hills and water. From the city below, sounds of church bells came up, mellow and tranquil, ringing lazily and without effort. Other sounds mingled with them, refined and made delicate by distance. It was like being on an island floating in the air above the town. Rose got up and shook the dust from her coat.
“The churches are coming out, it must be nearly one. It will be lunch-time before I get home.”