"I don't believe I could ever make you understand what I mean, we are so hopelessly far apart," she said, a little sadly. "That an explanation is necessary—that is the hopeless part. That that poor woman did not comprehend that her conduct and callousness were shocking—that was the hopeless part. To make you understand what I mean would be like making her understand all the hundreds of awful things that her conduct meant to us. If it is not in one's nature to comprehend without words, then words are useless."
His vehement protests stirred her sympathy again.
"You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am beginning to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that? Drawn together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who refuse to allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought it must fail sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of her husband's life, or a resentful endurance of it, may result from the accursed faithfulness or the pitiful dependence of wives, but surely—surely no greater calamity could befall her and no worse fate lie in wait for him."
Her lover stared at her, pained and puzzled. When they reached her door he grasped her hand.
"I thought you loved me last night, and I went away in an ecstasy of hope. Today—"
"Perhaps I do love you," she said; "but I do not respect you, because you do not respect me." He made a quick sound of dissent, but she checked him. "You do not respect womanhood; you only patronize women—you only patronize me. I could not give you a right to do that for life. Good-bye. Don't come in this time. Wait. Let us both think."
"Let us both think," he repeated, as he started down the street. "Think! Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly unreasonable. It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is deucedly uncomfortable while it lasts."
"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a man that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate of womanhood?"
The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what she had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter, but the new turn they had taken surprised her.
"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself in love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster smiled at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She thought she had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the matter.