"How is it possible?"
He said, exasperated: "Do you suppose I can endure this sort of existence forever?"
The swift tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't know—I don't know," she faltered. "I thought this existence of ours ideal. I thought you were going to be happy; I supposed that our being together again would bring happiness to us both. It doesn't! It is making us wretched. You are not contented with our friendship!" She turned on him passionately: "I don't wish to be your mistress. I don't want you to make me wish to be. No girl naturally desires less than she is entitled to, or more than the law permits—unless some man teaches her to wish for it. Don't make such a girl of me, Clive! You—you are beginning to do it. And I don't wish it! Truly I don't!"
In that fierce flash of candour,—of guiltless passion, she had revealed herself. Never, until that moment, had he supposed himself so absolutely dominant, invested with such power for good or evil. That he could sway her one way or the other through her pure loyalty, devotion, and sympathy he had not understood.
To do him justice he desired no such responsibility. He had meant to be honest and generous and unselfish even when the outlook seemed most hopeless,—when he was convinced that he had no chance of freedom.
But a man with the girl he loves in his arms might as well set a net to catch the wind as to set boundaries
to his desires. Perhaps he could not so ardently have desired his freedom to marry her had he not as ardently desired her love.
Love he had of her, but it was an affection utterly innocent of passion. He knew it; she realised it; realised too that the capacity for passion was in her. And had asked him not awaken her to it, instinctively recoiling from it. Generous, unsullied, proudly ignorant, she desired to remain so. Yet knew her peril; and candidly revealed it to him in the most honest appeal ever made to him.
For if the girl herself suspected and dreaded whither her loyalty and deep devotion to him might lead her, he had realised very suddenly what his leadership meant in such a companionship.
Now it sobered him, awed him,—and chilled him a trifle.