“That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to yourself,” Dick explained. “You were mine until I ceased being the greatest man in the world. He then became the greatest man in the world.”
She shook her head.
“Let me try to solve it for you,” he continued. “You don’t know your mind, your desire. You can’t decide between us because you equally want us both?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Only, rather, differently want you both.”
“Then the thing is settled,” he concluded shortly.
“What do you mean?”
“This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. Don’t you see. Here am I, even with him, even and no more, while my advantage over him is our dozen years together—the dozen years of past love, the ties and bonds of heart and memory. Heavens! If all this weight were thrown in the balance on Evan’s side, you wouldn’t hesitate an instant in your decision. It is the first time you have ever been bowled over in your life, and the experience, coming so late, makes it hard for you to realize.”
“But, Dick, you bowled me over.”
He shook his head.
“I have always liked to think so, and sometimes I have believed—but never really. I never took you off your feet, not even in the very beginning, whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been glamoured. You were never mad as I was mad, never swept as I was swept. I loved you first—”