"S-sir?"
"Suppose you knew you could never marry a woman. Would you keep away from her? Or would you do as much as you could to break her heart first?"
Burgess yawned: "Yes, sir."
"You'd do all you could?"
"Yes, sir."
There was a long silence; then Berkley laughed. "They drowned the wrong pup," he said pleasantly. "Good night."
But Burgess was already asleep again.
CHAPTER IX
And now at last she knew what it was she feared. For she was beginning to understand that this man was utterly unworthy, utterly insensible, without character, without one sympathetic trait that appealed to anything in her except her senses.
She understood it now, lying there alone in her room, knowing it to be true, admitting it in all the bitter humiliation of self-contempt. But even in the light of this new self-knowledge her inclination for him seemed a thing so unreasonable, so terrible, that, confused and terrified by the fear of spiritual demoralisation, she believed that this bewildering passion was all that he had ever evoked in her, and fell sick in mind and body for the shame of it.