"To some," I said to her, honestly. "But it was never thus."
She curled her lip, scorning the truth which she had asked now that she
had it. "And if any other woman were here it would be the same. It is
because I am here, because we are alone, because I am a woman--ah, that
is neither wise nor brave nor good of you!"
"That is not true! Were it any other woman, yes, what you say might be
true in one way. But I love you not because you are a woman. It is
because you are Ellen. You would be the only woman in the world, no
matter where we were nor how many were about us. Though I could choose
from all the world, it would be the same!"
She listened with her eyes far away, thinking, thinking. "It is the old
story," she sighed.
"Yes, the old story," I said. "It is the same story, the old one. There
are the witnesses, the hills, the sky."
"You seem to have thought of such things," she said to me, slowly. "I
have not thought. I have simply lived along, enjoying life, not
thinking. Do we love because we are but creatures? I cannot be loved
so--I will not be! I will not submit that what I have sometimes dreamed
shall be so narrow as this. John Cowles, a woman must be loved for
herself, not for her sex, by some one who is a man, but who is beside--"
"Oh, I have said all that.
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