“That’s just it. I don’t know.... I don’t want anything ever to happen to make her unhappy. You and I have talked pretty frankly, haven’t we? Somehow you seem to understand things over here, though you are as American as I am—and you—well, you don’t make a fuss. But even at that, you don’t know how I feel about her.... Maybe I’m going to be in love with you, and maybe I’m in love with you already. I don’t know.... But I do know that I love her.” “If you are by way of making love to me you’ve invented a new method.” “I’m not making love to you. I guess I’m trying to reason things out aloud.” “Using me as a wall to bounce your ball against.” He smiled without mirth. “Something like that. I know I love Andree, but yet I can see myself in love with you.... I’ve asked you before if a man can be in love with two girls at the same time.” “I don’t know. Not in the same way, anyhow.” “It would be different. If I did love you I would be thinking about marriage all the time. It would mean marriage. I would want you for my wife.... But Andree—she doesn’t mean that. At least marriage doesn’t figure in it. I can’t explain exactly, but it’s as if there never had been such a thing in the world as marriage—only love.” “I’m not sure but that is better. Even if I am American I don’t know but I’d rather have that kind.” “Andree isn’t just an adventure, an incident. She’s more important than that—the most important thing that ever happened to me.... I can’t explain. I can feel it, but I can’t express what it is. It isn’t that I couldn’t marry her, nor that I wouldn’t be mighty lucky to have her for a wife.... It seems, somehow, that marriage doesn’t signify—isn’t necessary.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.” “I don’t, either. I’m trying to find out.... But I do know that I don’t want to hurt her or make her sorry she has loved me.” “How about me?” she asked, suddenly. “You?” “How about hurting me?” she asked. “You’ve made a weird sort of love to me. You’ve balanced on the fence and told me you might fall in love with me. You’ve carried on a sort of rubber-elastic courtship—ready to snap back out of reach if I seemed likely to catch you.... Have you thought about me at all? Really, I’ve some right to be considered.” She was right. Undoubtedly he had not been fair to her. He had thought only of himself and of his sentiments toward her, but scarcely at all of her sentiments toward him. “Why,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve thought of that side of it. It never occurred to me that you—that you might be in love with me.” “Well, I’m not.” She spoke sharply. “Do you mean you never could be?” “There! Of all things!... You want me to tell you that if you make up your mind to condescend to love me I’ll be ready to drop into your hands. You want to have your cake and eat it. I’d say you were the most completely selfish person I’ve ever encountered.”