"Respectable!" burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to her companion's face. "That's the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obliged to—that's all: for I should never have let him go. Can't you see how preposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?—when for months I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one's feelings so easily? Don't you understand that to love a person once is to love him always and altogether?—his faults as well—everything he does, good or bad, no matter what other people think of it? Oh, you have never really cared for anyone yourself, or you would know it."
"It's not preposterous at all," retorted Madeleine. "Yes—if he had deserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if unhappy circumstances had separated you. But that's not the case. He has behaved scandalously, without the least attempt at shielding you. He has made you the talk of the place. And you may consider me narrow and prejudiced, but this I must say—I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has shown you as plainly as he can that he's tired of you, that you should still be ready to defend him, and have so little proper pride that you even say you would take him back!——"
Louise turned on her. "You would never do that, Madeleine, would you?—never so far forget yourself as to crawl to a man's feet and ask—ask?—no, implore forgiveness, for faults you were not conscious of having committed. You would never beg him to go on loving you, after he had ceased to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if he would not—or could not. As I would; as I have done." But chancing to look at Madeleine, she grew quieter. "You would never do that, would you?" she repeated. "And do you know why?" Her words came quickly again; her voice shook with excitement. "Because you will never care for anyone more than yourself—it isn't in you to do it. You will go through life, tight on to the end, without knowing what it is to care for some one—oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly——"
She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had carried the cups and saucers to a side-table, and now put on her hat.
"And I hope I never shall," she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. "If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man again."
But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of the rocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Madeleine with wild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind of revenge for the suffering, real and imaginary, that she had undergone at the hands of this cooler nature.
"And I'll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will never be able to make a man care so much that—that you are forced to love him like this in return. It isn't in you to do it. I don't mean because you're plain. There are plenty of plainer women than you, who can make men follow them. No, it's your nature—your cold, narrow, egotistic nature—which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away."
She laughed; but tears were near at hand. Madeleine had turned her back on her, and stood buttoning her jacket, with a red, exasperated face.
"I shall not answer you," she said. "You have worked yourself into such a state that you don't know what you're saying. All the same, I think you might try to curb your tongue. I have done nothing to you—but be kind to you."
"Kind to me? Do you call it kind to come here and try to set me against the man I love best in the world? And who loves me best, too. Yes; he does. He would never have gone, if he hadn't been forced to—if I hadn't been a hindrance to him—a drag on him."