"But you will try, won't you?" she demanded mockingly.
He said, forcing a smile: "You seem to think it impossible that I could win you."
"Oh," she said airily, "I don't say that. You see I don't know the method of procedure. I don't know what you're going to do about your falling in love with me."
He leaned over and took her by the waist; and she drew back instinctively, surprised and disconcerted.
"That is silly," she said. "Are you going to be silly with me, Clive?"
"No," he said, "I won't be that."
He sat looking at her in silence for a few moments. And slowly the belief entered his heart like a slim steel blade that she had never loved, and that there was in her nothing except what she had said there was, loyalty and devotion, unsullied and spiritual, clean of all else lower and less noble, guiltless of passion, ignorant of desire.
As he looked at her he remembered the past—remembered that once he might have taught her love in all its attributes—that once he might have married her. For in a school so gentle and secure as wedlock such a girl might learn to love.
He had had his chance. What did he want of her now, then?—more than he had of her already. Love? Her devotion amounted to that—all of it that could
concern a man already married—hopelessly married to a woman who would never submit to divorce. What did he want of her then?