"To your publishing your own poems? How could I?"
"To the dedication, I mean. If it hadn't been all over, would you have given your consent to that?"
His anxiety had deepened to an agony which seemed to have made his face grow sharp and thin almost as she looked at him. She judged that this question was vital, and that the truth was required of her.
"No, not to that. You see, it's only because it's all over that I've consented now."
"I see; that's the condition? You would never have consented but for that."
"Why should we talk about that now?"
"I wanted to know the truth."
"Why should you? It's a truth that has nothing to do with things as they are, only with things as they might have been. Isn't it enough to be glad that they weren't, that it is all over, and that this is the end of it?"
Even as she said the words it struck her that there was something ominous in this reiteration.
"But it isn't all over. This isn't the end of it."