When he stopped she was silent. Then:
“I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend to tell?”
“That I didn't intend to tell? I have made no reservations, Lily.”
“Are you sure? Or don't you realize it yourself?”
“Realize what?” He was greatly puzzled.
“I think, Willy,” she said, quietly, “that you care a great deal more for Edith Boyd than you think you do.”
He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she fail to know better than that? And he did not see the hurt behind her careful smile.
“You are wrong about that. I—” He made a little gesture of despair. He could not tell her now that he loved her. That was all over.
“She is in love with you.”
He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and not know that as she sat there so she sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray to; and she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than saint, he knew, and even for that he loved her. But he did not know the barbarous cruelty of the loving woman.