"You don't know!" Varick slowly shook his head. "Do you mean that?" asked Bab, her eyes wondering.
He stirred uncomfortably.
"I'm afraid so. Don't you see you're the one who must help yourself there? I can't decide that for you; it wouldn't be right."
Her wonder grew. What wouldn't be right? Hadn't he voluntarily offered to help her?
"You don't understand," said Varick; "I'll help you any way I can, Bab, but not that way. I can't tell you whether you must marry David. Your conscience will have to decide that. It's hardly right for me even to comfort you. Can't you see it?"
"Don't you love me?" she asked slowly. "Is that it?"
Varick smiled anew.
"You know I do," he answered. "But if you'd think, you'd see, too, I have no right even to tell you that."
The fine ethics of this, however, Bab was in no mood to comprehend. Love is woman's one fierce, common right. She wages it as man wages war—instinctively. And as in war, in love—as she often sees it—all things are fair.
"It's just this, Bab," said Varick; "you've given your word to David Lloyd. You're his woman, the one he's going to marry. With that promise still standing, you're as much his as if you were his wife. I can't tell you anything, Bab; I mustn't even tell you that I love you." Trying to keep his feelings from showing in his face, he fastened his eyes on hers. "I was a friend of his once. I can't stab him in the back like that. If you love him, Bab, marry him. If you don't, then decide whatever way you can. But don't ask me to decide for you. I can't! I never can!"