Cannot you see how right, how good it is?
It is not as if I came to you from another woman----" The girl faced around on him almost fiercely.
"No, you could not be so bad as that! To have felt the morning kiss of another woman, to have watched her good-night smile, and then to have come to me--that would have been too base, too degrading--I should have hated you because I despised you.

I should have loathed you instead----" "Of loving me! Be honest and true, little Jean--you do care." "Yes, I have cared." "And do still ?" "Yes." Her tone was as cold and as clear as the sound of an icicle striking the frozen earth in the fall.

It angered him, and his voice shook roughly.
"A man who binds up his life in the love of a woman is a fool! Because she is all the world to him, all he works to receive praise from, all he fears in the blaming, he thinks her capable of as much love as himself.

And even as he watches, he sees her pass from fervor into apathy.

Her affection is but the dry husks of what he hoped to find.
You never cared!" "Grant," she said, earnestly, "you have told me to be honest.