"That was dishonourable."
"No more than it was to love her. I am a lump of dishonour; I am made up of lies; but if she had an ounce of pluck, there need be no more falsehood. She has only to tell him the truth, the sad simple truth. 'I never loved you. I have let myself be persuaded into an engagement, but I never loved you.'"
"That would break Allan's heart."
"It would be bad to bear, no doubt, but not so bad as the gradual revelation that must come upon him in the years after marriage. She may be able to deceive him now—to delude him with the idea that she loves him; but how about the long winter evenings by their own fireside, and the dull nights when the rain is on the roof? A woman may hide her want of love before marriage; but, by Heaven, she can't hide it after! God help him when he finds that he has a victim, and not a wife!"
"Poor Allan! But how do you know she does not care for him—or that she cares for you?"
"How do I know that I live and breathe, that this is I?" touching himself, with an impatient tap of those light restless fingers. "I know it. I have known it more or less from the time we played those duets—the dawn of knowledge and of love. To know each other was to love. We were born for each other. Allan, with his shadowy resemblance to me, was only my forerunner, like the man one sees in the street, the man who reminds one of a dear friend, half an hour or so before we meet that very friend. Allan taught her to like the type. She never loved him. In me she recognizes the individual, fated to love her and to be loved by her."
"Dear Geoffrey, this is mere guess-work."
"No! It is instinct, intuition, dead certainty. I tell you—once, twice, a thousand times, if you like—she loves me, and she doesn't love him. Tax her with it, pluck out the heart of her mystery. This hollow sham—this simulacrum of love must not go on to marriage. Talk to her, as woman to woman, as mother to daughter. I tell you it must not go on. It is driving me mad."
"I will do what I can. Poor Allan! So good, so true-hearted!"
"Am I false-hearted or vile, mother? Why should Allan be all in all to you?"