"The risk, you see, involves her happiness; and judging by what I know of your temperament—"
"What do you know about my temperament?"
"You know perfectly well what I know about it."
"I know. You don't approve of my morals. I don't altogether blame you, considering that since I knew Miss Harden I very nearly married someone else. My code is so different from yours that I should have considered marrying that woman a lapse from virtue. So the intention may count against me, if you like."
"Look here, Rickman, that is not altogether what I mean. Neither of us is fit to marry Miss Harden—and I have given her up." He said it with the sublime assurance of Jewdwine, the moral man.
"Does it—does her illness—make all that difference? It makes none to me."
"Oh, well—all right—if you think you can make her happy."
"My dear Jewdwine, I don't think, I know." He smiled that smile that Jewdwine had seen once or twice before. "It may be arrogant to suppose that I'll succeed where better men might fail; still—" He rose and drew himself up to all his slender height—"in some impossible things I have succeeded."
"They are not the same things."
"No; but in both, you see, it all depends upon the man." With that he left him.