"I've got you back—haven't I?" she said unsteadily. But he could not speak, and stood savagely controlling his quivering lip with his teeth.
"I just want you as I had you, Clive—my first boy friend—who turned aside from the bright highway of life to speak to a ragged child.... I have had the boy; I have had the youth; I want the man, Clive,—honestly, in perfect innocence.
"Would you care what might be said of us—as long as we know our friendship is blameless? I am not taking you from her, am I? I am not taking anything away from her, am I?
"I have not always played squarely with men. I don't think it is possible. They have hoped for—various eventualities. I have not encouraged them; I have merely let them hope. Which is not square.
"But I wish always to play square with women. Unless a woman does, nobody will.... And that is why I ask you, Clive—am I robbing her—if you
come back to me—as you were?—nothing more—nothing less, Clive, but just exactly as you were."
It was impossible for him to control his voice or his words or even his thoughts just yet; he stood with his lean head turned partly from her, motionless as a rock, in the desperate grip of self-mastery, crushing the slender hands that alternately yielded and clasped his own.
"Oh, Clive," she said, "Clive! You don't know—you never can know what loneliness means to such a woman as I am.... I thought once—many times—that I could never again speak to you—that I never again could care to hear about you.... But I was wrong, pitifully wrong.
"It was not jealousy of her, Clive; you know that, don't you? There had never been any question of such sentiment between you and me—excepting once—one night—that last night when you said good-bye—and you were very much overwrought.
"So it was not jealousy.... It was loneliness. I wanted you, even if you had fallen in love. That sort of love had nothing to do with us!