"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them."
"And if you had met them?"
"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them. I shouldn't have fallen in love with you, if it hadn't been for your goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any other woman."
"Have you known many other women?"
"One way and another, in the course of my life—yes. And what I liked so much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit. It was as if they were always expecting something from me—I couldn't for the life of me tell what—always on the look out, don't you know, for some mysterious moment that never arrived."
She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever at assigning causes.
He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly. Being with you was peace."
"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."
"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."
"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me. I must have seemed to you at peace, then."