"Then we'll go together, and you can investigate closets and bureaus and dressers—"
"Clive! Why did you let those things remain?"
"I didn't care to have anybody else take that place."
"Do you know that what you have done is absurdly and frightfully sentimental?"
"Is it?" he said, trying to laugh. "Well that snivelling and false sort of sentiment is about the best that such men as I know how to comfort themselves with—when it's too late for the real thing."
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I am saying. Cheap minds are fed with false sentiment; and are comforted.... I made out of that place a smug little monument to you—while you were living alone and almost penniless in a shabby rooming house on—"
"Oh, Clive! You didn't know that! And anyway it would not have altered things for me."
"I suppose not.... Well, Athalie; you are very wonderful to me—merciful, forgiving, nobly blind—God!" he muttered under his breath, "I don't understand how you can be so generous and gentle with me,—I don't, indeed."