"It came back to me then how you had always treated those who were weaker than yourself. You had always been a champion of old ladies and children. Every animal, from Peter Pan to your old fat horse--that old fat horse now is living in clover since you acquired your motor cars--adored and followed you.
"And one day I told Van Rosen--that I couldn't marry him. You don't know how humble I felt to think that I might have hurt him. But in that moment his real self showed. He was angry, furiously angry, and I knew all at once that it was my money, and not me that he wanted.
"But you had Bettina, and there was no place for me. No place for the little dark-eyed girl who had listened to the big boy on stormy nights, no place for the woman who had not known her own heart----
"And now you want me to be your friend. But I can't be your friend--Anthony. Friendship is for the man and woman who have never loved. A friendship which is the aftermath of love is the shadow after the substance. Can't you see that it is so? Can't you see that there would be just two things which might happen? If I stayed here and tried to be your friend, either I should knit myself to you by ties which should bind you to your wife, or we should drift apart, having the perfect memory neither of love nor of friendship.
"Bettina is very young, but she has depths of which you have not dreamed, of which I had not dreamed, until I talked with her last night. I went up to her room, and we had a very sweet and tender confidence. It was almost dawn before I left her. She showed me much of her heart, as she will, I hope, some day show it to you----
"Hers is a little white soul, dear friend. On the surface she has her girlish petulances, her youthful prejudices. But these? Why, I had a thousand of them, Anthony. How I snubbed those poor students whom you brought with you one afternoon to tea because their elbows were shiny and their shoes rusty. I was such a little snob, Anthony. How I should welcome them now--those great doctors, who have done so much for humanity.
"It is life which teaches us, dear friend. It will teach Bettina. And it must teach me this: To bear the hard things. Do you remember in those days when we read of knights on the battle-field that we loved those who died fighting? And how we hated those who ran away? Well, I'm going to fight--but my fight must begin by running away.