"No," he said, "until we've talked this out we've got to be like strangers. We can't go on, you know, Maggie, and it's no use your saying we can." She pressed her hands tightly together. "I can convince him better," she thought to herself, "if I'm very quiet and matter-of-fact." So, speaking very calmly and not looking at him, she went on: "But, Martin, you promised last time that it would depend on me ... You said that if I didn't mind your being married and was willing to take risks that we would go on together. Well, I've thought all about it and I know that I'd rather be miserable with you than happy with any one else. But then I shouldn't be miserable. You seem to think you could make me miserable just as soon as you like. But that depends on myself. If I don't want to be miserable nobody can make me be." She paused. He moved a little closer and suddenly took her hand. She drew it away and went on: "Don't think I'm inexperienced about this, Martin. You say I know nothing about men. Perhaps I don't. But I know myself. I know what I want, and I can look after myself. However badly you treated me, it would be you that I was with all the time." "No, no, Maggie," he answered, speaking rapidly and as though he were fiercely protesting against some one. "It isn't that at all. You say you know yourself--but then I know myself. It isn't only that I'm a rotten fellow. It is that I seem to bring a curse on every one I'm fond of. I love my father, and I've come back and made him miserable. It's always like that. And if I made you miserable it would be the worst thing I ever did ... I don't even know whether I love you. If I do it's different from any love I've ever had. Other women I'd be mad about. I'd go for them whatever happened and got them somehow, and I wouldn't care a bit whether they were happy or no. But I feel about you almost as though you were a man--not sensually at all, but that safe steady security that you feel for a man sometimes ... You're so restful to be with. I feel now as though you were the one person in the world who could turn me into a decent human being. I feel as though we were just meant to move along together; but then some other woman would come like a fire and off I'd go ... Then I'd hate myself worse than ever and be really finished." Maggie looked at him. "You don't love me then, Martin?" she asked. "Yes I do," he answered suddenly, "I keep telling myself that I don't, but I know that I do. Only it's different. It's as though I were loving myself, the better part of myself. Not something new and wildly exciting, but something old that I had known always and that had always been with me. If I went away now. Maggie, I know I'd come back one day--perhaps years afterwards--but I know I'd come back. It's like that religious part of me, like my legs and my arms. Oh! it's not of my own comfort I'm doubting, but it's you! ... I don't want to hurt you, Maggie darling, just as I've hurt every one I loved--"