“You’re a real friend,” he said, holding out his hand and pressing hers—“a real friend. But friendship’s blind as well as love. You put me higher than I am; I’m not lowering myself.”
“Not higher than you were once, at any rate. And what you were once, you can be again. You don’t love Agatha, then?”
“No, and I see now I never did,” he answered. “I didn’t know anything about her when I married her, or about myself either. I thought I could go on loving her and that we should be happy together. We aren’t. I can’t make her happy and she can’t make me. You knew that when you asked me, didn’t you?”
“You don’t care for that other woman?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“And—you can’t live alone?” she spoke almost in a whisper so that he could scarcely catch her words.
“That’s just it. I can’t bear being alone now. I used not to mind it a bit, but somehow I seem to have been changing lately—since I found out that Agatha couldn’t be a real companion to me. I never wanted one before; I suppose thinking I had found one and finding I had not, has made me long for one. So—don’t blame me too much.”
“I’m not blaming you,” she said fiercely almost. “You don’t think I’m preaching to you?—don’t think that. How little you know of me! I suppose you imagine I’m a cold-blooded saint? I’m not. I’m a woman. I can forgive any man, or any woman either, anything that they do for love, real love. But—women like the one you were with last night I can’t forgive—they’re pests, beasts themselves and making beasts of others. Is that the kind of thing you expected _me_ to say? I can see it isn’t.”
West did not answer. He was utterly amazed at his complete ignorance of one he believed he knew well.
“You’ve never—really understood what love means,” she went on; “I sometimes think that only women do.”
“You’re wrong there, Alice. I, for one, know. Only—only, I found out too late. I did not find out until after I was married and the woman I love—well—you understand. I’ve got what I don’t want and I can’t get what I do.”
“But isn’t it rather cowardly because you think you can’t have what you long for, to go and play at love—with such women as that?”
“It means nothing. No more than a good dinner or a beautiful picture or a play. Just passes the time.”