"Not till we've lived it ourselves."
She got up abruptly and moved away from him. She felt as though a chasm had opened at her feet. Or had it always been there? Had she been blinded by her girlish worship of his strength and almost feminine gentleness? She did not know. She felt a physical nausea creep over her.
"You promised to make me happy. You don't when you talk like that."
He thought a moment.
"I do want to make you happy, Anne. It's not an exaggeration to say I'd give my life for you. But—I was thinking it over whilst I was alone out there—happiness isn't a thing you see in a shop window and buy for a price. You have to have it in yourself if you're going to give it to others. I shouldn't be happy if I pretended to be any one else but myself. I should stifle and have no power to make you happy. I can't humbug—I don't want you to, either. We've both got to be free, or it's the end of everything." He waited a moment, watching her. "Anne, do you know whom I've seen?" he asked, with a complete change of tone.
"No."
"Sir Gilbert Foster. I heard that he was tiger-hunting this way, and I tracked him down. I wanted to see him and tell him about some favourable symptoms I have noticed in your father's condition. Also I wanted to make a suggestion. Well, he agrees with me. It means an operation—a pretty dangerous one. I wanted him to perform it, but he can't. He's got a Conference somewhere or other. He thinks I'm the man to go ahead with it."
She turned swiftly, suspiciously. She saw the flame under the fine brows—perhaps glimpsed how deep and passionate was his desire for her happiness, how eagerly he had planned this moment. She came back to him and knelt down, her trembling hands on his shoulders.
"Tris—does that mean—he might get well?"
"He might. It's a fighting chance."