"But it seems to me I am the one to say what is fair or unfair to me. After all, my happiness is at stake."
"Much more than yours. You are selfish, Michael--not meaning to be, but because you would hurt me to my very heart to spare yourself self-reproach, if ever after our marriage anything should come out of the past to trouble us. As if anything matters to a woman who loves, so long as she is well loved in return!"
"You show me to myself in an unkind light . . ."
"I am using every weapon I can find in my fight with life for the right to be happy."
"I would break my own heart rather than cause you an instant's unhappiness . . ."
"You think so, dear. But you at least would have the memory of an act of renunciation to console you--you could say to yourself: 'I suffer, but for her sake.' For me there would be only the knowledge that I had been cheated out of my due. I have the right to claim more of life than it has given me . . ."
The voice of melancholy music faltered, then resumed: "The War took my husband from me before I was old enough to know what love could mean. Now, long after, I have found a greater love--and I am required to give it up solely because you are afraid somebody may some day tell me what I already knew, that once upon a time you were a little lower than the angels!"
To avoid the accusation of her look, Lanyard stared blindly into the fire.
"I am not good enough for such a love as yours, Eve."
"Perhaps no one of us is good enough for Love. Yet we can try to be, by serving . . ."
Lanyard hung his head; and in accents of quiet conviction Eve de Montalais pursued: "Something _has_ happened. I thought so, from your manner this afternoon, now I am sure. It isn't that you have ceased to care for me--"
"What, then? It must be something quite as serious, you couldn't hold out against me as you do if it were anything less. Michael: you can't refuse to tell me now."
He made a sign of submission combined with a plea for time in which to assort his thoughts. Indisputably nothing less than the truth would satisfy her; but it might be that something less than the whole truth, so sure to terrify the woman, would serve.
And while he sat turning the matter over in his mind, their waiter approached.