"It is not
true what I say? I lay bare my heart to him, and he tells me that I
act!"
"But my dear girl! surely you do not expect me to think otherwise?"
"I was a fool to expect anything from you," she returned bitterly--"you
know too much about me. I cannot find it in my heart to blame you,
since I am what I am, what the life you saved me to so long ago has
made me. Why should you believe in me? Why should you credit the
sincerity of this confession, which costs me so much humiliation? That
would be too good for me, too much to ask of life!"
"I think you cannot fairly complain of life, Liane. What have you asked
of it that you have failed to get? Success, money, power,
adulation----"
"Never love."
"The world would find it difficult to believe that."
"Ah, love of a sort, yes: the love that is the desire to possess and
that possession satisfies."
"Have you asked for any other sort?"
"I ask it now. I know what the love is that longs to give, to give and
give again, asking no return but kindness, understanding, even
toleration merely. It is such love as this I bear you, Michael.
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