"Or a vampire," she laughed.
He shook his head. He had lost his sense of humour for the time. "I'm not making any mistake about you. I've been away about world matters like most men. The women we meet usually call us to be less than we are, rather than more—"
"Men have made women that way," she said quickly.
"The way doesn't matter. That's what happens, or at least men think so, and fail to get on the ground where even an average woman is at her best.... But it's not generalities for me. I perceived myself lost in you. I loved from the first the great open nature which you drew from—mates in everything, your whole creativeness lost in the one subject—your whole power and reason for being—love. When I came to you I seemed to come into my own country.... I did not seek you. I was happy enough in the old. I looked bleak and blind to myself before your coming. Oh, I praise you right enough—only it's hard, damned hard, to give up—"
"You will be tremendous for some woman," she whispered. "Let me tell you—there was one day when I rocked before you—"
"To think I could diminish after that," he said slowly. His voice chilled her.
"You have said it all, Sir Romney. We did not seek this thing. At least, I had no wish to hurt you. I do not play in these great matters. Some have thought otherwise, but I do not play. You would not have known me an hour if you had not been worth knowing—"
"I have ceased to be worth knowing then—only to-day?"
"That is not kind, Sir Romney. You are less than yourself to say that. We have been much together. If you are hurt by this, it is because you are less than I think you are. Hurt—I mean enduringly. Hurt, of course now, but constructively. You will not die. Perhaps you will not break training seriously. Listen, do you think I fail to know what will happen to you—if you make the best of this? ... You will be a greater lover for some other woman. She will have to be a greater woman to call you. You will know her more in the first hour because of these days with me. You will be less apt to make the one hideous mistake which men and women make in the world—that of choosing the wrong mate. You will be a quester because of these days with me. There's something precious about that."
"If there is but one woman in the world for me—as you say there is but one man for you—then why is it that I want you so?"