“How could I expect you to understand me, when I can’t understand myself?” Pidge demanded. “I am two people, and they are at war.... No use lying about it. I fell for him, knowing him all the time. Not for a minute did I lose track of what he is. But I wanted him. Something in me answered--that’s all.” “I’ve always loved that honest Pidge,” said Miss Claes. “Think, if you like, that it’s part of the evil in me that talks this way about him, but I am talking about myself, too.” “You could never see all this clearly--without ‘falling for’ him, Pidge.” “What do you mean?” “I mean it would remain a hopeless, unfinished puzzle--if you had run away from Rufus Melton.” “I couldn’t run away. I wanted him,” Pidge repeated. “But there’s another side. There’s something in him that I seem to have known from the beginning--something like a little child that I left somewhere ages ago. It keeps calling to me from his eyes, and I leave everything to go to it--everything that Dicky means and the world, even writing--I leave all that. And yet when I go, when I go to his arms, I lose the purpose. It’s as if the child that I run to--the irresistible thing that calls to me from his eyes--stops crying and stops needing me! Then I suddenly know that it must need me and not be gratified, ever to be helped. Oh, no one on earth could understand that. It’s insane.” “But, Pidge, I do understand.” “How can you?” “Because I have loved like that, because I have had experience. I loved an English boy in the same way--oh, long ago. I love him still, but I could not stay with him, because he--why, Pidge, it is just the same. He needs to cry for some one, for something, otherwise he remains asleep in life.” “You’re saying this to help me.” “What I’ve lived through _should_ help you. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever known--that I couldn’t forget everything and have him, just two alone in the world. But when I went to him, he was satisfied and looked elsewhere. I almost died of revolt.” Pidge’s eyes were very wide. “And when you didn’t go to him?” she said in slow tones. “What happened then?” “It was then that he remembered and reminded me that I was half-caste. Also he looked elsewhere, just the same.” “And you still love him?” “Deep underneath--that is not changed.” “But what is Nagar?” “Nagar means the other world, Pidge--a new heaven and a new earth. He means the not-wanting love, the willing-to-wait love----” “I’m not like that,” Pidge said with old bitterness. “I want love in a room! I want to shut the world out. I don’t want the love of the world, but love that’s all mine. And I can’t--I can’t have it!” She was breathing deeply, staring at the fire.