She rose.
"I know," she said, "I've broken all the rules. A woman shouldn't come and tell a man she cares for him."
"Why not?" he said simply.
"I tell you, I don't know why not. I only know that I'm so much more like a man than a woman that the rules for women don't apply. Why shouldn't I tell you? You know it—as God knows it."
"I know it as a man knows it. I told you I'd been there."
"Owen—shall I ever be where you are now?"
"I had to die first. I told you my youth was dead. That, Nina, was what you cared for."
It was not. Yet she yearned for it—his youth that was made to love her, his youth that returning, a dim ghost, followed her and loved her still.
"No," she said, "it isn't only that."
She paused in her going and knelt down by his half-packed portmanteau. With her free left hand she lifted up, folded and laid smooth the new suit he had flung in and crushed. Her back was now towards him and the door he was about to open.