"I can see that he has a sort of fascination ... for other women." She nodded, more thoughtfully, "I don’t trust him."
"I thought not. That’s what makes me wonder—"
She hesitated so long that I was compelled to say:
"I only will on condition that you authorize me."
"I authorize you to say anything you choose."
"Well, then, since you _don’t_ trust him, I wonder how you could expose any woman to—to his influence."
"Oh, but I don’t. The—the events all took place while I was away, and I’ve no control over them."
"No control, perhaps; but there are other things in life besides control."
"I know that; but what things, for instance, do you mean?"
"Oh, lots of things." She looked about the room as if not attaching much importance to her words. "Love, for one."
"But in this case love has to be counted out."
"Can you ever count out love? I thought that was the one permanent factor in existence, though the skies were to fall."
"It may be a permanent factor, and yet have to remain in abeyance."
"Nonsense! Who ever heard of love remaining in abeyance? You might as well talk of fire remaining in abeyance when it’s raging, or water when it’s bursting a dam, or any other element in active operation. If I loved any one, no matter how little, I should want to save them from a man like Colonel Stroud."
"In spite of the fact that you’d been considered guilty of—"
"Oh, what does it matter what any one thinks of so poor a thing as oneself? I mean that oneself _to_ oneself is so very unimportant."
"Of course I know that there are other points of view, and that from some of them oneself _to_ oneself is the most vital of all considerations. But in the detail of what other people think of one—"
"Even when the other people are those of whom you think most in all the world?"
"Let us think most of them then. Don’t let us think most about ourselves."
"Do you suppose I’m thinking most about myself now? I assure you I’m not."
She laughed again, not lightly, but rather pitifully.
I did judge of it, all through that spring, coming more and more to the conclusion that I was right. It was not the only occasion on which Mildred Averill and I talked the matter over; but it became at last a subject on which agreeing to differ seemed our only course. The time came when I remembered with an inward blush that I had once feared that this clear-eyed, well-poised girl, who had really found herself, might be in love with me. What her exact sentiment toward me was I have never been able to name further than to put it under the head of a "deep interest." Had circumstances been in our favor that interest might at one time have ripened into something more; but from that she was saved by the instinct which told her that, in spite of my assertions, as to which she nevertheless didn’t charge me with untruth, I was a married man.