“How do you know? Tell me one thing, Anne, because it has always interested me. You didn’t need to tell me there had been many men in your life: have you ever felt any responsibility toward them? I mean this: have you ever stopped to question your right to attract them, to awaken their love, even when you knew there was no interest on your part?”
“Why, no, of course not.”
“Probably not; such things are unconscious—an instinct. And of a dozen men who come to love you, eight or ten forget quickly. But some don’t, do they?”
“No, that’s true.”
“That’s what I mean by the harm good women do, unconsciously. You would not give pain willingly, I am sure, and yet I doubt if even you realize the sorrow that has come from you. You may say it’s all in the game. It is: but I go back to what I said—that often a girl like yourself, like Molly, with everything to charm and attract, leaves wounds behind that it takes years to heal. That’s the strange thing about it; a friendship that is precious in the life of both, inevitably, by some hidden spark of impulse, a sudden need of the soul, is transformed into love on the part of one. Then, what happens? Not only is the friendship taken out of the lives of both, but to one that first joy of human contact becomes emptiness and bitterness. It is not only of you I am thinking, but of my own sister. When I saw Molly again, so radiant, so lovely in her unconscious youth, so eager for life to begin, I could not help thinking that wherever she went, so lightly and so joyfully, she would leave behind her many bruises and aches. Then, a few real men will come to love her profoundly, and without hope, and know the daily, hourly slavery to a hopeless longing.”
“It is of yourself you are talking now, Davy?”
I stopped, thunderstruck. In my earnestness I had quite forgotten how much my own personal feelings must have given warmth to my statement.
“Of course, I did not expect that in all this time you wouldn’t have fallen in love,” she said. She stood, looking down. “It’s a queer world.” The next moment she had started up the ravine, swinging from rock to rock, with a challenge to me to follow. I hurried after her, vexed at my own indiscreet revelations and seriously alarmed at her reckless flight.
“Be careful. You’ll slip and turn your ankle. Anne, you’re crazy!”
“Nonsense, never slip!”