“No—not that.”
“Do you suppose,” he went on, “that I will give you up, then? You can’t love a man one day and not love him the next! You’re not that sort! Do you think I would have written you—do you think for one minute I would have come here, if I hadn’t known you loved me? What is this thing that has come between us? What is it takes you from me? Doesn’t love mean anything? Tell me!” he said, as she was silent. “Don’t stand there that way!”
“How can I?” she cried. “I tried to tell you in those letters.”
“Letters!” There was a rasp in Daunt’s voice. “What did they tell me? Only that there was some occult reason—Heaven only knows what—why it was all over; why I was not to see you again. Do you suppose that’s enough for me? You don’t know me!”
“No, but I know myself.”
“Well, then, I know you better than you know yourself. You said you didn’t want to see me again! That was a lie! You do want to see me again! You’re nursing some foolish self-deception. You’re fighting your own instincts.”
“I’m fighting myself,” she said; “I’m fighting what is weak and miserably wrong. I can’t explain it to you. It isn’t that I don’t know what you think. I don’t know where I stand with myself.”
“You loved me!” he burst forth, in a tone almost of rage. “You loved me! You know you did! Great God! you don’t want me to think you didn’t love me that day, do you?” he said, a curiously hard expression coming into his eyes.
“I don’t know.” She spoke wearily. “I—don’t—know. How can I know? Don’t you see, it isn’t what I thought then—it isn’t what I did. It’s what was biggest in my thought. Oh—” she broke off, “you can’t understand! You can’t! It’s no use. You’re not a woman.”
“No,” he said roughly, “I’m not a woman. I’m only a man, and a man feels!”