“I tell you,” he replied quickly, like a cornered dog, “I am quite willing, provided it doesn’t touch your love for me. If it would touch that, I am dead against it.”

Connie could only be silent in cold fear and contempt. Such talk was really the gabbling of an idiot. He no longer knew what he was talking about.

“Oh, it wouldn’t make any difference to my feeling for you,” she said, with a certain sarcasm.

“There!” he said. “That is the point! In that case I don’t mind in the least. I mean it would be awfully nice to have a child running about the house, and feel one was building up a future for it, I should have something to strive for then, and I should know it was your child, shouldn’t I, dear? And it would seem just the same as my own. Because it is you who count in these matters. You know that, don’t you, dear? I don’t enter, I am a cipher. You are the great I-am! as far as life goes. You know that, don’t you? I mean, as far as I am concerned. I mean, but for you I am absolutely nothing. I live for your sake and your future. I am nothing to myself.”