She understood him so well—so much better than Rachel. She knew that neither he nor Rachel would ever have had the wisdom to endure that romantic impatience that was in both of them—"They would have been fighting in a week—But I—should know how to deal with him——"
The green park and the brooding sky seemed to join in her tenderness—She had never loved him so surely, so unselfishly as she loved him now.
"Tell me," he said gruffly. "I wrote to her ... did she tell you anything about that?"
"Yes," Lizzie answered—"I don't know what might have happened if he hadn't had the accident.... But as it is, I know she's glad you wrote—She likes to look back on it, but it's on something that died—gone altogether. And it's much, much better so."
"To you," he said, "it may be so."
"Only because through these weeks I've got to know her so well. She's strange—unlike any other woman I've known. Her great charm is that she's so unattainable. Men will always love her for that and sometimes she may think she loves them in return, but no man will ever call the real woman out of her. If she were to have a child, perhaps that would ... but we—all of us—you, I, Dr. Christopher, her husband—all of us who love her will always love her without quite knowing why and without, in the end, her belonging to any one of us.
"I've grown to love her during these last weeks and I've thought it was because I was sorry for her and admired her pluck—but it isn't that really—It's simply because—well, because—there's something wonderful in her that isn't for any of us."
"Well, you've been very kind, Miss Rand, I shan't forget it. You've said just the thing to put it all straight and clear. I wouldn't do anything now to disturb her or hurt her husband, poor devil ... it must be hell for him ... and it don't anyway matter much what happens to me—it never has done.
"You've been a brick. If you really care to bother about a rotten waster like myself I'll be proud.... Good-bye and thank you——"
He took her hand and shook it and then was gone, striding off, furiously, towards the trees.