f miracle thing that
happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I
made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it
doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it
doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship--there's this about it. You
can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can
give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you
can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to--something
that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did
anything to earn it.

"And that's why it can't satisfy me.--Because it doesn't, Roddy. It
hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's--_happened_ to
me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just
because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to--well, this is
hard to say--I can't bear to use it to live on. I can't bear to have it
mixed up in things like millinery bills and housekeeping expense. I
can't bear to see it become a thing that piles a load of hateful
obligations on your back. I could live on your friendship, Roddy;
because your friendship would mean that somehow I was earning my way,
but I can't live on your love; any more than you could on mine. Won't
you--won't you just try to think for a moment what that would mean to
you?"

Now that he had sensed the direction her talk was headed in, even though
he hadn't even vaguely glimpsed the point at which she was going to
bring up, he made it much harder for her to talk to him. He was tramping
up and down the room, stopping and turning short every now and then with
a gesture of exasperation, or an interruption that never got beyond two
or three words and broke off always in a sort of frantic speechlessness.

She knew he couldn't help it. Down underneath his mind, controlling
utterly its processes, was a ganglion of instincts that were utterly
outraged by the things she was saying to him. It was they and not his
intelligence she had to fight. She must be patient, as gentle as she
could, but she must make him listen.

"You've got my friendship!" he cried out now. "It's a grotesque
perversion of the facts to say you haven't."

She smiled at him as she shook her head. "I've spent too many months
trying to get it and seeing myself fail--oh, so ridiculously!--not to
know what I am talking about, Roddy."

And then, still smiling, rather sadly, she told