"My God. I don't care what you are."
He came to her and stood by her, with his face close to her, not touching hers, but very close. His eyes searched her. She stood rigid in her supernatural self-possession.
"Jinny, you knew. You knew all the time I cared."
"I thought I knew. I did know you cared in a way. But not in this way. This—this is different."
She was trying to tell him that hitherto his passion had been to her such a fiery intellectual thing that it had saved her—as by fire.
"It isn't different," he said gravely. "Jinny—if I only wanted you for myself—but that doesn't count as much as you think it does. If you didn't suffer——"
"I'm not suffering."
"You are. Every nerve's in torture. Haven't I seen you? You're ill with it now, with the bare idea of going back. I want to take you out of all that."
"No, no. It isn't that. I want to go."
"You don't. You don't want to own that you're beaten."