“So you came to me to tell me. It was brave of you?”
“I had to come. I could not have come if you had been different from what you are.”
“Then, even though I am taking away the man you love from you, you do not hate me?”
“Hate you? Sometimes I think I wished I could—but I could not. If I had hated you, if I had thought you cold and hard to all the world, I would not be here. I have come to plead to you because you are generous and honest, true and good. I could not have come otherwise.”
“What must I do, little Ellice?”
“Tell him the truth, if there is—”
“There is—yet that could never come to anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because—ah, you can’t understand.”
“Still, your heart is not your own; you could never give it to Johnny Everard.”