It all sound pretty hopeless. And yet I can hear now her words, spoken amidst the dreaming haze of that summer afternoon.... "I'm _not_ amusing myself. I'm in earnest as I've never been before. I've been in earnest ever since that night I told him the truth about Karelsky. Do you remember how wrong we all were about him? June and you thought it would do him harm to be told how he'd been swindled, and I thought it would do him good--and we were all wrong, because it just hadn't any effect on him at all! He didn't care--he was beyond things like money or fame.... There's something in him--something that makes him the sort of man he is--something that draws me to him more than love. It _is_ more than love.... I could have gone without him easily but for seeing that in him.... Hilton, can't you realize? He's _straight_ and he's _true_, and I've been living my life up to now with a man who laughs at straightness and truth. Can't you imagine how it is--can't you _see_?" I remember how I was silent, and how, touching my arm eagerly, she went on: "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I haven't been very straight and true myself.... But I _have_. I've been true to one man, and that's all you can expect any woman to be. It isn't my fault that the man I've been true to doesn't happen to be my husband.... He might have been if _you_ hadn't interfered." "If _I_ hadn't interfered?" "Yes ... that's what I said." "You mean, I suppose, that I'm to blame for persuading Terry to go to Vienna?" "Everything would have been different if you hadn't done so." "You would have gone away with him?" "Yes." "And married him--after the divorce formalities?" "Yes." "And you really think that you'd have been willing to give up your life of luxury to become the wife of a man whose yearly earnings would hardly pay for your hats?" "He would have earned more if I'd been with him." "Perhaps a very little more. But double or treble would still have seemed poverty to you." "I wouldn't have cared.... You think I love money and luxury, but I don't--it all means nothing to me, really. As for Geoffrey's money, it gets on my nerves--I _hate_ it. Even now--in his chair all day long--he's making more of it--buying and selling shares and speculating and gambling and winning--yes, winning nine times out of ten. That's his way--he's always found winning the easiest job in the world.... Yet Terry can't even get the few paltry pounds he worked himself ill for! Oh, it's all sickening and damnable, and I wish we were all naked savages in a land where there wasn't such a thing as money.... I can't bear to think of it--it makes me want to go wild and fly at somebody's throat--anybody's--yours--Terry's--even Geoffrey's...."