"It isn't a question of the quantity but of the quality of your attachments. If I'd ever asked anything of you it would have been—well, romance." He laughed quietly at himself. "Something you haven't got to give. You see, I'm a romantic and you're not. You've sought excitement, admiration, change. But not 'the light that never was on land or sea.' You're adventurous and passionate, but not romantic. It's quite a different order of thing."
"And you're brutal. Besides, you're wrong; quite wrong."
"Am I?" His glance ranged the faces on the mantel. "Which one?"
She gave him a swift smile. "He isn't there. You never saw him. His name was Cary Scott."
"Was? Is he dead?"
"He's out of my life; or almost. He's married. He was hardly more than a boy when I knew him. Nine years ago in Paris. He was studying at the Polytechnique, doing his post-graduate work and doing it brilliantly, I believe. He went mad over me. My fault; I meant him to; it amused me. I was attracted, too. There was a vividness of youth about him. I didn't realise how much I was going to miss him out of my life, though, until we came back. I did miss him. Like hell!"
"He was the one to whom you really gave?"
"Hardly so much as a kiss. I wanted to keep it that way, and he was slave to me. He was an innocent sort of soul, I think. Every year he sends me a card on my birthday—that was the date of our first meeting—to remind me that sometime we are to take up our friendship again. I never answer but I never quite forget."
"Ah, that's the sort of thing that I'd have asked but never expected of you."
"No; you never could have had it. That's the sort of thing that one gives but once." Suddenly she shot out her white, strong hand and gripped his wrist. "If you'd ever been really in love with me," she said fiercely, "you wouldn't let me die. You'd find some way to save me."