"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 told you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."
"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you, Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I mean I want to be with you, to be with you always. I'm not happy when you're not there....