'You know,' said Gerald, who also was struggling with an emotion that, rising, overcame his control, 'you know what I think of you--what I expect of you. A great match--a great man--something fitting for you--one could accept that; but this little American nonentity, this little American--barely a gentleman--whom you'd never have looked at if he hadn't money--a man who will make you ridiculous, a man who can't have a thought or feeling in common with you--it's not fit--it's not worthy; it smirches you; it's debasing.' He had not turned to look at her while he spoke, perhaps did not dare to look. He knew that his anger, his more than anger, had no warrant, and that the words in which it cloaked itself--though he believed in all he said--were unjustifiable. But it was more than anger, and it must speak, must plead, must protest. He had no right to say these things, perhaps, but Helen should understand the more beneath, should understand that he was lost, bewildered, miserable; if Helen did not understand, what was to become of him? And now she stood there behind him, not speaking, not answering him, so that he was almost frightened and murmured on, half inaudibly: 'It's a wrong you do--to me--to our friendship, as well as to yourself.' Helen now spoke, and the tone of her voice arrested his attention even before the meaning of her words reached him. It was a tone that he had never heard from her, and it was not so much that it made him feel that he had lost her as that it made him feel--strangely and penetratingly--that he had never known her. 'You say all this to me, Gerald, you who in all these years have never taken the trouble to wonder or think about me at all--except how I might amuse you or advise you, or help you.' These were Helen's words. 'Why should I go on considering you, who have never considered me?' It was so sudden, so amazing, and so cruel that, turning to her, he literally stared, open-eyed and open-mouthed. 'I don't know what you mean, Helen,' he said. 'Of course you don't,' she continued in her measured voice, 'of course you don't know what I mean; you never have. I don't blame you; you are not imaginative, and all my life I've taken care that you should know very little of what I meant. The only bit of me that you've known has been the bit that has always been at your service. There is a good deal more of me than that.' 'But--what have you meant?' he stammered, almost in tears. Her face, white and cold, was bent on him, and in her little pause she seemed to deliberate--not on what he should be told, that was fixed--but on how to tell it; and for this she found finally short and simple words. 'Can't you guess, even now, when at last I've become desperate and indifferent?' she said. 'Can't you see, even now, that I've always loved you?'