“How could I forget?” She looked at him as though he had wounded her.
“I don’t know.”
They were silent while Paul continued to walk up and down. At length he proceeded.
“Certainly my being there wouldn’t have helped much, would it? It isn’t as though you had ever allowed me to love you or comfort you! God knows, I’ve been ready to do so—any time. I thought you hated me. Do you?”
“Yes,” she replied, “at this moment I hate you intensely.”
“Why did you come here, then—if you hate me?”
“O Paul, Paul! Because I needed you!”
He stared at her. This woman! “I didn’t suppose anybody needed me now, except the devil.”
He saw then that she was crying and that he had hurt her tremendously. He saw distinctly that he had been unjust. But his mind could not piece together the broken fragments of the situation. He, too, had been unjustly treated: it was not fair for a woman to allow a man to love her for six years, and to hold herself away from him merely for the sake of her own career—her own whimsical happiness. He felt that in the hour of need Marie had not been with him. He felt this even more keenly than his own cruelty toward her now.
“My God!” he exclaimed, in the midst of his meditation. “What twenty-four hours will do!”