"Oh, I don't know!" She looked up. "A woman knows what she can do. Don't
tell him that I love him." She looked up again. "Just say something to
him. Oh, it's so terrible to be a woman; I can't do anything. You won't
tell him exactly that I love him? That's the thing that makes a man hate a
woman, if you tell it him plainly."

"If I speak to him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence
with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs." She moved as
though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said:
"Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it means
marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped of all
romance and distance, living face to face: seeing each other as a man sees
his own soul? Do you realize that the end of marriage is to make the man
and woman stronger than they were; and that if you cannot, when you are an
old man and woman and sit by the fire, say, 'Life has been a braver and a
freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in hand, than if we had
passed through it alone,' it has failed? Do you care for him enough to
live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an old, faded man, and you an
old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his sins and his weaknesses, when
they hurt you most? If he were to lie a querulous invalid for twenty
years, would you be able to fold him in your arms all that time, and
comfort him, as a mother comforts her little child?" The woman drew her
breath heavily.

"Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once
know that he loved me better than anything in the world!"

The woman stood looking down at her. "Have you never thought of that other
woman; whether she could not perhaps make his life as perfect as you?" she
asked, slowly.