"What a boy you are, what a boy! You have all the headstrong, passionate eagerness of youth, and yet you pretend to play the wearied liver of many lives! No, Dick," her voice grew gentler, and it came to him like a pleasant harmony, "we will do nothing so foolish. You and I are always to be very good friends, and we will help each other always, but not that, not that! You are too young; regret would come to you all too soon. No matter how nicely each of us were to fashion his or her temper to the other's, there would come that thought: for the hope of mere comfort I have sacrificed an idol. For, Dick, think, think! Dorothy Ware! Do you think I have not watched you, found you out long ago? What was it, Dick, a tiff? A refusal?"
He stopped in his sentry-go, and began to whistle, softly, 'La donna e Mobile.' "I—I beg your pardon," he added, hastily, "I fear I forget my manners. Was it a refusal? you ask. Well,—perhaps, perhaps not. At the time, I thought it was. Since then I have found out things—things—Bah, what does it matter!"
"Go on," she said, "tell me!"
"In Germany, I met Wooton—"
She interrupted. "Ah, yes; I remember a terrible cruel picture you drew of a man at a café table, drinking. It was his face, unmistakably. Why did you do that?"
"That was—only an afterthought. Well, he had been—drinking, and he talked a good deal. Some of it was about Miss Ware."
For a moment there was silence.
Then "And you believed it?" she asked.
"At the time, no. Lord knows I did not want to. But, afterward, I remembered the look on her face when she gave me that last refusal. It was a strange look; it meant more than I could account for, at that time. Yes," he sighed, "I believe it. Why shouldn't I? I know how vile a man may be; be a woman only half as weak, or half as 'new,' and she is a thing for loathing."
"Hush! What a conventional man it is, after all. Always the same old tune, one thing for the man, another for the woman! Listen: I know Dorothy Ware, better, perhaps, than you do; I know her later self, you only know her as a child. There are great points of similarity between you two. She has much of your absurd sensitiveness; self-torment is one of her vices. She is very much given to making mountains out of molehills. She—"