The young Chinese lady is shrinking inside her silks as if frost had touched her—all she knows is that she doesn't understand. And then there is the harlequin looking at her with his face gone suddenly pinched and odd as if he had started to torture himself with his own hands; and the fact that he will not touch her, and what he says.
“Oh, Elinor, darling. Oh, I can't tell you, I can't.”
“But what is it, Ted?”
“It's this—it's what I meant to tell you before I ever told you I loved you—what I haven't any right not to tell you—and I guess that the fact I didn't, shows pretty well what sort of a fellow I am. Do you really think you know about me, dear—do you really think you do?”
“Why, of course, Ted.” The voice is still a little chill with the fright he gave her, but under that it is beautifully secure.
“Well, you don't. And, oh Lord, why couldn't it have happened before I went to France!—because then it would have been all different and I'd have had some sort of a right—not a right, maybe—but anyhow, I could have come to you—straight. I can't now, dear, that's all.”
The voice halts as if something were breaking to pieces inside of it.
“I can't bring you what you'd bring me. Oh, it isn't anything—physically—dangerous—that way—I—was—lucky.” The words space themselves as slowly as if each one of them burnt like acid as it came. “It's—just—that. Just that—while I was in France—I went over—all the hurdles—and then a few more, I guess—and I've got to—tell you about it—because I love you—and because I wouldn't dare love you, even—if I didn't—tell you the truth. You see. But, oh my God, I never thought it would—hurt so!” and the parti-colored body of the harlequin is shaken with a painful passion that seems ridiculously out of keeping with his motley. But all that the young Chinese lady feels is that for a single and brittle instant she and somebody else had a star in their hands that covered them with light clean silver, and that now the conjuror who made the star out of nothing and gave it to her is showing her just why there never was any star. Moreover, she has only known she was in love for the last five minutes—and that is hardly long enough for her to discover that love itself is too living to be very much like any nice girl's dreams of it—and the shock of what Ted has said has brought every one of her mother's reticent acid hints on the general uncleanliness of Man too prickling-close to her mind. And she can't understand—she never will understand, she thinks with dull pain.
“Oh how could you, Ted? How could you?” she says as he waits as a man walking the plank might wait for the final gentle push that will send him overboard.
“Oh, I know it was fine of you to tell me—but it's just spoiled everything forever. Oh, Ted, how could you?” and then she is half-running, half-walking, up the path toward the porch and all she knows is that she must get somewhere where she can be by herself. The harlequin does not follow her.