I don’t know just what I said then, but I remember that I found myself repeating over and over again, the phrases running metrically up and down my mind: “You couldn’t marry Gurnard; you don’t know what he is. You couldn’t marry Gurnard; you don’t know what he is.” I don’t suppose that I knew anything to the discredit of Gurnard—but he struck me in that way at that moment; struck me convincingly—more than any array of facts could have done.
“Oh—as for what he is—” she said, and paused. “I know....” and then suddenly she began to speak very fast.
“Don’t you see?—can’t you see?—that I don’t marry Gurnard for what he is in that sense, but for what he is in the other. It isn’t a marriage in your sense at all. And ... and it doesn’t affect you ... don’t you see? We have to have done with one another, because ... because....”
I had an inspiration.
“I believe,” I said, very slowly, “I believe ... you do care....”
She said nothing.
“You care,” I repeated.
She spoke then with an energy that had something of a threat in it. “Do you think I would? Do you think I could?... or dare? Don’t you understand?” She faltered—“but then....” she added, and was silent for a long minute. I felt the throb of a thousand pulses in my head, on my temples. “Oh, yes, I care,” she said slowly, “but that—that makes it all the worse. Why, yes, I care—yes, yes. It hurts me to see you. I might.... It would draw me away. I have my allotted course. And you—Don’t you see, you would influence me; you would be—you are—a disease—for me.”
“But,” I said, “I could—I would—do anything.”
I had only the faintest of ideas of what I would do—for her sake.