like, where each is free, where there’s no obligation upon either side.”
“For a time—perhaps,” she agreed, a little despondently. “But obligations always grow up. There are feelings to be considered. People aren’t simple, and though they may mean to be reasonable, they end”—in the condition in which she found herself, she meant, but added lamely—“in a muddle.”
“Because,” Denham instantly intervened, “they don’t make themselves understood at the beginning. I could undertake, at this instant,” he continued, with a reasonable intonation which did much credit to his self-control, “to lay down terms for a friendship which should be perfectly sincere and perfectly straightforward.”
She was curious to hear them, but, besides feeling that the topic concealed dangers better known to her than to him, she was reminded by his tone of his curious abstract declaration upon the Embankment. Anything that hinted at love for the moment alarmed her; it was as much an infliction to her as the rubbing of a skinless wound.
But he went on, without waiting for her invitation.
“In the first place, such a friendship must be unemotional,” he laid it down emphatically. “At least, on both sides it must be understood that if either chooses to fall in love, he or she does so entirely at his own risk. Neither is under any obligation to the other. They must be at liberty to break or to alter at any moment. They must be able to say whatever they wish to say. All this must be understood.”
“And they gain something worth having?” she asked.
“It’s a risk—of course it’s a risk,” he replied. The word was one that she had been using frequently in her arguments with herself of late.
“But it’s the only way—if you think friendship worth having,” he concluded.
