ely so. Do you know, I'd rather you'd taken it
that way than that you should talk about my dreams. My _dreams_." (It
was shocking, the violent emphasis of disgust the poet, the dreamer,
flung into that one word.) "As if I'd dreamed that I knew you. As if
I'd dreamed that I cared for you. Would you rather think I dreamed it?
You can if you like. Or would you rather think it was the most real
thing that ever happened to me? So real that after it happened--_because_
it happened--I left off being the sort of man and the sort of poet I
was, and became another sort. So real and so strong that it saved me
from one or two other things, uncommonly strong and real, that had got
a pretty tight hold of me, too. Would you rather think that you'd
really done this for me, or that I'd dreamed it all?"

She looked at his face, the unforgotten, unforgetable face, which when
she first knew it had kindled and darkened so swiftly and
inexplicably. She knew it now. She held the key of all its mysteries.
It was the face that had turned to her five years ago with just that
look; in the mouth and lifted chin that imperious impetuous
determination to make her see; in the eyes that pathetic trust in her
seeing. The same face; and yet it would have told her, if he had not,
that he was another man. No, not another man; but of all the ways that
were then open to him to take he had chosen the noblest. And so, of
all the expressions that in its youth had played on that singularly
expressive face, it was the finest only that had become dominant. That
face had never lied to her. Why should he not plead for the sincerity
of his passion, since it was all over now? Was it possible that there
was some secret insincerity in her? How was it that she had made him
think that she desired to ignore, to repudiate her part in him? That
she preferred a meaningless compliment to the confession which was the
highest honour that could be paid to any woman? Was it because the
honour was so great that she was afraid to take it?

"Of course I would rather think it was really so."

"Then you must believe that I really cared for you; and that it is
only because I cared that it is really so."

"I do believe it. But I can't take it all to myself. Another person
might have cared just as much, and it might have done him harm--I
would never have forgiven myself if I had done you harm--I want you to
see that it wasn't anything in _me_; it was something in _you_ that
made the