You say you know yourself--but then I know myself. It isn't only
that I'm a rotten fellow. It is that I seem to bring a curse on
every one I'm fond of. I love my father, and I've come back and made
him miserable. It's always like that. And if I made you miserable it
would be the worst thing I ever did . . . I don't even know whether
I love you. If I do it's different from any love I've ever had.
Other women I'd be mad about. I'd go for them whatever happened and
got them somehow, and I wouldn't care a bit whether they were happy
or no. But I feel about you almost as though you were a man--not
sensually at all, but that safe steady security that you feel for a
man sometimes . . . You're so restful to be with. I feel now as
though you were the one person in the world who could turn me into a
decent human being. I feel as though we were just meant to move
along together; but then some other woman would come like a fire and
off I'd go . . . Then I'd hate myself worse than ever and be really
finished."
Maggie looked at him.
"You don't love me then, Martin?" she asked.
"Yes I do," he answered suddenly, "I keep telling myself that I
don't, but I know that I do.
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