"I want to know," he says, standing before me, "what you mean by behaving in this way to me?"
My hands are locked fast together, my gillyflowers lie in my lap my cheeks could grow no paler than they were before if only my lips will keep steady, and my eyes tell no secrets———
"In what way, Mr. Vasher?"
"In never speaking to or looking at me; in never giving me a single chance of a few words alone with you—though Heaven knows I have worked hard enough to compass it. Could you have treated an enemy with more coldness and disdain? And I have been your friend, Nell, for many long years."
Yes, I have been wrong, as usual. I ought to have met him just the same as I did before he told me his story; instead of which, I have left him to guess the miserable truth; and now, no doubt, he pities me. . . . But I could not do the other; my strength did not go so far as that.
"You have always been my friend," I say gently. "I know it, but—you will not be angry with me?"
"Angry? No!"
"When you told me that you loved somebody, I thought you would always want to be talking about her, like other lovers, and that you would expect me to listen; and I always was a bad listener; any one who talks as much as I do, must be; and so—and so I avoided you. Besides, you can always think of her, you know, and that must be better than praising her to me, who never saw her."
"And this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" he says. Then, as I do not answer, for his searching voice arraigns me before my own conscience as having answered disingenuously: "Would it bore us so much if we were to exchange confidences—you about him, I about her?"
