"I see. You'd have liked me, have preferred me, a billionaire!"

"How should I not have liked you?" she simply again asked.

He stood before her still--her question kept him motionless. He took it
in, so much there was of it; and indeed his not otherwise meeting it
testified to that. "I know at least what I am," he simply went on; "the
other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I
believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent.
I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have
come to you again and again--in fact you've admitted to me as much--that
I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous
scandalous life. And you see what it has made of me."

She just waited, smiling at him. "You see what it has made of _me_."

"Oh you're a person whom nothing can have altered. You were born to be
what you are, anywhere, anyway: you've the perfection nothing else could
have blighted. And don't you see how, without my exile, I shouldn't have
been waiting till now--?" But he pulled up for the strange pang.

"The great thing to see," she presently said, "seems to me to be that it
has spoiled nothing. It hasn't spoiled your being here at last. It
hasn't spoiled this. It hasn't spoiled your speaking--" She also
however faltered.

He wondered at everything her controlled emotion might mean. "Do you
believe then--too dreadfully!--that I _am_ as good as I might ever have
been?"