"And why not get away?" he asked gently.
"Because I can't do anything like other people, by bits and halves. If I once go, I shall never come back—never. There's no use thinking about it. I've thought about it till I could have gone mad." She faced him bravely. "Mr. Durant, if you ever want a thing as badly as I want that, let me tell you that it will be simpler and easier to give it up altogether, for always, than to keep on looking at it and touching it and letting it go."
"Do you apply that principle to everything?"
"Nearly everything."
"H'm. Uncompromising. Yet I doubt if you are wise."
"Wise? Isn't it wiser to stand a little hunger than to go back to starvation after luxury?"
"Oh, of course; at that rate you can bring your soul down to a straw a day. But in the end, you know, it dies."
"If it comes to that, mine was dead ages ago, and buried quite decently, too. I think we won't dig it up again; by this time it might not look pretty."
At any other time she would have alienated his sympathy by that nasty speech; it was the sort of thing he hated women to say. But he forgave her because of her evident sincerity.
She dried her eyes and left him to his own reflections.