"
"I have only contempt for a woman who tries to hold a man when he wishes
to go," said Anita, with quiet but energetic bitterness. "Besides"--she
hesitated an instant before going on--"Gladys deserves her fate. She
doesn't really care for him. She's only jealous of him. She never did love
him."
"How do you know?" said I sharply, trying to persuade myself it was not an
ugly suspicion in me that lifted its head and shot out that question.
"Because he never loved her," she replied. "The feeling a woman has for
a man or a man for a woman, without any response, isn't love, isn't
worthy the name of love. It's a sort of baffled covetousness. Love means
generosity, not greediness." Then--"Why do you not ask me whether what she
said is true?"
The change in her tone with that last sentence, the strange, ominous note
in it, startled me,
"Because," replied I, "as I said to her, to ask my wife such a question
would be to insult her. If you were riding with him, it was an accident."
As if my rude repulse of her overtures and my keeping away from her ever
since would not have justified her in almost anything.
She flushed the dark red of shame, but her gaze held steady and unflinching
upon mine.
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