It hasn't had very much to make it
bright and interesting. I'm not complaining but it's just been that way--"
She broke off for a moment. "I don't want you to interrupt or say anything.
It'll make it easier for me if I can just talk out into the night air, as
it were--just as though no one were here."
She went on: "The one thing that's made it possible, made it bearable, made
it alive, has been my love for you. Always from the first moment I saw you
I have loved you. Oh! I haven't been foolish about it. I knew that you'd
never care for me in that kind of way. I knew from the very first that we
should be pals but that you'd never dream of anything more romantic. I've
never had any one in love with me--I'm not the kind of woman who draws the
romance out of men.
"No, I knew you'd never love me, but I just determined that I'd make you,
your career, your success, the pivot, the centre of my life.
"I wasn't blind about you--not a bit. I knew that you were selfish, weak,
incredibly young about the world. I knew that you were the last person in
existence to marry Clare--all the more reason it seemed to me why I should
be behind you. I was behind you so much more than you ever knew. I wonder
if you've the least idea what most women's lives are like. They come into
the world with the finest ideals, the most tremendous energies, with a
desire for self-sacrifice that a man can't even begin to understand.
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