She had picked up a small jade vase from the mantelpiece and was now bestowing upon it what appeared to be an exhaustive observation. In reality she was hardly conscious that she held it in her hand.
"Cresswell, why did you marry me?"
He started ever so slightly and then answered unhesitatingly, "Because I loved you, Dita."
A little spasm of some emotion he could not fathom passed over her face. "It was not because you wished to see how the flower blooming in a tin can in a tenement window would bloom in a wonderful lacquered vase in a marble court? It was not from curiosity or pity, Cresswell?"
"It was love, Dita."
Again that wave of emotion over her face, and then she looked about her with sad, tear-wet eyes and a trembling mouth.
"And my caprices, my stupidity, my inadequacy, soon destroyed that?"
"Never," he repeated. "Believe that. I was no gardener trying experiments. It was the flower I loved, Dita; the flower whose happiness I longed for, whose happiness I still long for. You do not need my love, do not care for it, why should you? But give me the happiness of still being able to assure for you the marble courts and the lacquered vases."
The little jade vase dropped from her fingers and fell unheeded to the rug at her feet. The tears were pouring now, down her white face. She made no effort either to conceal or to staunch them.
"Ah, blind and wasteful creature that I am!" she cried. "Why, why should you have chosen to love me?"