He replied, gritting his teeth: "I would love you if you were filth itself."
"Ah, would you?" she answered, with wistful pathos in her voice. "But I'm not like that. I love you for what I know you are, for what I know you could be!"
"Could be? Could have been! But Clare, Clare—who's to blame?"
"So many things happen dreadfully in this world and nobody knows who's to blame."
"But not this, Clare. We're to blame."
"We can be to blame without being—all that you said."
"Can we? Can we? There's another thing. If Helen had—had lived—she would have had a baby in a few months' time...."
He paused, waiting for her reply, but none came. She went very pale. At last she said, with strange unrestfulness: "What can I say? What is there to say? ... Oh, don't let us go mad through thinking of it! We have been wrong, but have we been as wrong as that? Hasn't there been fate in it? Fate can do the awfullest things.... My dear, dear man, we should go mad if we took all that load of guilt on ourselves! It is too heavy for repentance.... Oh, you're not bad, not inwardly. And neither am I. We've been instruments—puppets——"
"It's good to think so. But is it true?"
"Before God, I think it is.... Think of it all right from the beginning.... Right from the night you met us both at Millstead.... It's easy to blame fate for what we've done, but isn't it just as easy to blame ourselves for the workings of fate?"