that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes
fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.

"You see," he said, "you did trust me. You wouldn't tell me all that if
you didn't."

"Of course I trust you. I told you because you trusted me. I thought--I
thought you ought to know. I daresay you did know--all the time."

"No. No, I didn't. I shouldn't have believed it was in you."

"It isn't in me now. It's gone clean out of me. I shall never want that
sort of thing again."

"I know _that_." He said it almost irritably. "I mean I shouldn't have
thought you could have cared for a brute like that.... But the brutes
women _do_ care for ..."

"I suppose I did care. But I don't feel as if I'd cared. I don't feel as
if it had ever really happened. I can't believe it did. You see, I've
forgotten such a lot of it. I couldn't have believed that once, that you
could go and do a thing like that and forget about it. You'd have thought
you'd remember it as long as you lived."

"You couldn't live if you remembered...."

"Oh, John, do you think it was as horrible as all that?"

His face moved, flashed into sudden passion.

"I think _he_ was as horrible as that. He makes it
horrible--inconceivably horrible."

"But--he wasn't."

"You've told me. He was cruel to you. And he lied and funked."

"It wasn't like him--it wasn't _like_ him to lie and funk. It was my
fault. I made the poor thing jumpy. I let him run such whopping risks.
_The_ horrible thing is thinking what I made him."

"He was a liar and a coward, Charlotte; a swine."

"I tell you he _wasn't_. Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other?
Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he
lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I
daresay I shall funk and lie."

"Charlotte--are you sure you don't care for him?"

"Of course I'm sure. I told you I'd forgotten all about it. _This_ is
what I shall remember all my life. Your being here, my being with you.
It's the _real_ thing."

"You wouldn't want to go back?"

"To him?"

"No. To that sort of thing."

"You mean with--just anybody?"

"I mean with--somebody you cared about. Could you do without it and go
on caring?"

"Yes. If _he_ could. If he could go on. But he wouldn't."

"'He' wouldn't, Charlotte. But _I_ would.... You know I _do_ care for
you?"

"I thought you _did_--I mean I thought you were beginning to. That's why
I t