“So were you. I saw you and you saw me.”
“Yes, it was a stupid remark. I was going to say that I know who was the woman with you.”
She spoke nervously, hesitatingly, in strong contrast to her usual quiet, serene way of speaking.
“I saw her at Brighton with Mr. Maddison, and Agatha told me about her. But even if I’d not heard anything about her, I should have known what she is. Are you disgusted at my talking like this? Are you going to tell me—quite kindly, I know—to mind my own business? I think it is my business. I’m your friend, and with me friendship doesn’t mean sitting by and watching a friend—lowering himself.”
“You’re a real friend,” he said, holding out his hand and pressing hers—“a real friend. But friendship’s blind as well as love. You put me higher than I am; I’m not lowering myself.”
“Not higher than you were once, at any rate. And what you were once, you can be again. You don’t love Agatha, then?”
He hesitated a moment before replying.
“No, and I see now I never did,” he answered. “I didn’t know anything about her when I married her, or about myself either. I thought I could go on loving her and that we should be happy together. We aren’t. I can’t make her happy and she can’t make me. You knew that when you asked me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I wanted to hear you say so.”
“Why?”