I can't use it in a life like mine." She looked at him, and a dreamlike state began to come over her.

She simply couldn't believe in the state of mind of those sick-room days; she could never really, she thought, have been less passionately admiring than she was at that minute, yet the half-recollection confused her and kept her silent.
"Perhaps it's vanity on my part," he said, "but contempt like yours is something I could never forgive." "You would forgive me anything if you loved me." Her tone was noble and sincere.
"Perhaps." "You mean you don't ?" "Adelaide, there are times when a person chooses between loving and being loved." The sentence made her feel sick with fear, but she asked: "Tell me just what you mean." "Perhaps I could keep on loving you if I shut my eyes to the kind of person you are; but if I did that, I could not hold you an instant." She stared at him as fascinated as a bird by a snake.

This, it seemed to her, was the truth, the final summing up of their relation.

She had lost him, and yet she was eternally his.
As she looked at him she became aware that he was growing slowly pale.

He was standing, and he put his hand out to the mantelpiece to steady himself.