"Because there's nothing inside you that you're ashamed of."
She reddened with shame; shame of the fierce, base instinct that had made her keep him to herself. She knew that nothing escaped him. He had the keen, comprehending eyes of the physician who knows the sad secrets of the body; and he had other eyes that saw inward, that held and drew to confession the terrified, reluctant soul. She had an insane longing to throw herself at his feet in confession.
"Yes," she said, "but there are things——And yet——"
He stopped her. "Nothing, Nina, if you really knew yourself."
"Owen—it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did, however low I sank—if I could sink—your charity would be there to hold me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that nobody but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really Nina.'"
"I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'"
She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure, the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how her savage, solitary passion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he see, and yet did he not condemn her?
"Owen," she said suddenly, "do you mind seeing?"
"Sometimes I hate it. These aren't the things, you know, I want to see."
She lowered her eyes. Her nervous hand moved slowly to and fro along the window-sill, measuring her next words.