"Then you must believe that I really cared for you; and that it is only because I cared that it is really so."
"I do believe it. But I can't take it all to myself. Another person might have cared just as much, and it might have done him harm—I would never have forgiven myself if I had done you harm—I want you to see that it wasn't anything in me; it was something in you that made the difference."
He smiled sadly. "You know it does sound as if you wanted to keep out of it."
"Does it? If I had really been in it, do you think that I wouldn't be glad and thankful? I am, even for the little that I have done. Even though I know another woman might have done as much, or more, I'm glad I was the one. But, you see, I didn't know I was in it at all. I didn't know the sort of help you wanted. Perhaps, if I had known, I couldn't have helped you. But my knowing or not knowing doesn't matter one bit. If I did help you—that way—I helped some one else too. At least I should like to think I did. I should like to think that one reason why you care for your wife so much is because you cared a little for me. There is that way of looking at it." Then, lest she should seem to be seeking some extraneous justification of a fact that in her heart she abhorred, she added, "Every way I look at it I'm glad. I'm glad that you cared. I'm glad because it's been, and glad because it's over. For if it hadn't been over—"
"What were you going to say?"
"I was going to say that if it hadn't been over you couldn't have given me these. I didn't say it; because it would have sounded as if that were all I cared about. As if I wouldn't have been almost as glad if you'd never written a line of them. Only in that case I should never have known."
"No. You would never have known."
"I think I should have been glad, even if the poems had been—not very good poems."
"You wouldn't have known in that case either. I wouldn't have shown them to you if they had not been good. As it is, when I wrote them I never meant to show them to you."
"Oh, but I think—"