"I don't want to be your--mistress," she said. Truth disconcerts the vast majority. It disconcerted him--after a ringing silence through which the beating of rain on the window came to him like the steady tattoo of his own heart. "I did not ask that," he said, very red. "You meant that.... Because I've been everything to you except that." "I want you for my wife," he interrupted sharply. "But you are married, Clive. So what more can I be to you, unless I become--what I don't want to become--" "I merely want you to love me--until I can find some way out of this hell on earth I'm living in!" "Dear, I'm sorry! I'm sorry you are so unhappy. But you can't get free,--can you? She won't let you, will she?" "I've got to have my freedom! I can't stand this. Good God! Must a man do life for being a fool once? Isn't there any allowance to be made for a first offence? I've always wanted to marry you. I was a miserable, crazy coward to do what I did! Haven't I paid for it? Do you know what I've been through?" She said very sweetly and pitifully: "Dear, I know what people suffer--what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have been through." "I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours was the injury of bruised faith--the suffering caused by outrage. No hell of self-contempt set _you_ crawling about the world in agony; no despicable self-knowledge drove _you_ out into the waste places. Yours was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love of expediency and of self!" "Clive!--" "That's what I am!" he interrupted fiercely, "a damned fool! I don't know what else I am, but I can't live without you, and I won't!" She said: "You told me that being in love with me would not make you unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it." "You darling! I am more than happy!" "It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn't have let you." "Do you think you could have stopped me?" "I don't know. Couldn't I? I've stopped other men.... I shouldn't have let you. But it was so delightful--to be really loved by _you_! All my pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me really a woman, with a place among other women--to be loved by such a man as you ... and I was _not_ selfish about it; I did ask you whether it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I was very wrong, Clive--very foolish, very wrong! Because it _is_ making you restless and unhappy--" "If you could only love me a little in return!" "I don't know how to love you except the way I am doing--" "There is a more vital emotion--" "It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I do." "If you could only respond with a little tenderness--" "I _do_ respond--as well as I know how," she said piteously. He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips: