it. You say you'll never understand: but why shouldn't you?
Is it anything to be proud of, to know so little of the
strings that pull us? If you knew a little more, I could
tell you how such things happen without offending you; and
perhaps you'd listen without condemning me."

"I don't condemn you." She was dizzy with struggling
impulses. She longed to cry out: "I DO understand! I've
understood ever since you've been here!" For she was aware,
in her own bosom, of sensations so separate from her
romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and soul
divided against themselves. She recalled having read
somewhere that in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed
to wear a distinctive dress lest they should recognize each
other and learn their numbers and their power. So, in
herself, she discerned for the first time instincts and
desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in
the dim passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with
a cry of mutiny.

"Oh, I don't know what to think!" she broke out. "You say
you didn't know she loved you. But you know it now.
Doesn't that show you how you can put the broken bits
together?"

"Can you seriously think it would be doing so to marry one
woman while I care for another?"

"Oh, I don't know...I don't know..." The sense of her
weakness made her try to harden herself against his