“What!” he cried, astounded.
“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? Yet it is quite true. I fought him; I fought myself; I stood guard over my mind and senses there in the temple; I knew what he was and I detested him and I mocked him there in the temple.... And I loved him.”
“Sanang!” he repeated, not only amazed but also oddly incensed at the naïve confession.
“Yes, Sanang.... If we are to marry, I thought I ought to tell you. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly,” he replied in an absent-minded way, his mind still grasping at the thing. Then, looking up: “Do you still care for this fellow?”
She shook her head.
“Are you perfectly sure, Miss Norne?”
“As sure as that I am alive when I awake from a nightmare. My hatred for Sanang is very bitter,” she added frankly, “and yet somehow it is not my wish to see him harmed.”
“You still care for him a little?”
“Oh, no. But—can’t you understand that it is not in me to wish him harm?... No girl feels that way—once having cared. To become indifferent to a familiar thing is perhaps natural; but to desire to harm it is not in my character.”