"That is what he thinks."
"He is so very unattractive."
"He is an ugly, forbidding-looking man of forty," said Anne, who had become very pale.
"I should not go as far as that," said Mrs Trefusis, somewhat disconcerted.
"Oh! I can for you!" said Anne, her quiet eyes flashing. "He is all these things. He is exactly what I would rather not have married. And I think he knows that instinctively, poor man! But in spite of all that, in spite of everything that repels me, I know that we belong to each other. He did not choose to like me, or I to like him. I never had any choice in the matter. When I first saw him I recognised him. I had known him all my life. I had been waiting for him always without knowing it. I never really understood anything till he came. I did not fall in love with him; at least, not in the way I see others do, and as I once did myself years ago. I am not attracted towards him. I am him. And he is me. One can't fall in love with oneself. He is my other self. We are one. We may live painfully apart as we are doing now—he may marry some one else: but the fact remains the same."
Mrs Trefusis did not answer. Love is so rare that when we meet it we realise that we are on holy ground.
"You and he will marry some day," she said at last.
Her thoughts went back to her own youth, and its romantic love and marriage. There was no romance here as she understood it, nothing but a grim reality. But it almost seemed as if love could go deeper without romance.
"I do not see how a misunderstanding can hold together between you."