human
By Jove, you're a brick! You always were. I might have expected that this is exactly what you'd say.
gpt
I hope so. I didn't expect that you'd talk of my giving you away, as you call it--to any one.
human
But you're wrong, he said, with a return to the laughing bravado which concealed his inward repugnance to his position.
gpt
You're wrong. I'll give you that tip now. I'll fight fair. I sha'n't be grateful. I'll profit by your magnanimity. Remember it's my part in the world to be unscrupulous. It has to be. I've told you so. With me the end justifies the means--always; and when the end is to keep my word to Evie, it will make no difference to me that you were too high-minded to put the big obstacle in my way.
human
You'll not expect me to be otherwise than sorry for that--for your sake.
gpt
No, I dare say. But I can't stop to think of what any one feels for my sake when I know what I feel for my own.
human
Which is only an additional reason for my being--sorry. You don't find fault with me for that?
gpt
I do. I don't want you to be sorry. I want to convince you. I want you to see things from my point of view--how I've been placed. Good Lord! it's hard enough, without the sense that you're sitting in judgment on me.
human
I'm not sitting in judgment on you--except in so far as concerns Evie Colfax. If it was anybody else--
gpt
But it couldn't be anybody else It's Evie or no one. She's everything on earth to me. She's to me what electricity is to the wire--that which makes it a thing alive.
human
To be a thing alive isn't necessarily the highest thing.
gpt
Ah, but that doesn't apply to me. It's all very well for other men to say, 'All is lost to save honor.' They have compensations. I haven't. You might as well ask a man to think of the highest thing when he's drowning.
human
But I should. There have been men who haven't--and they've saved their lives by it. But you know what we've called them.
gpt
In my case there'd be only you to call me that--if you wanted to.
human
Oh no; there'd be--you.
gpt
I can stand that. I've stood it for eight years already. If you think I haven't had times when it's been hell, you're quite mistaken. I wonder if you can guess what it means to me--in here --he tapped his breast--
human
Because there's no way out of it isn't a reason for going further in.
gpt
What does that matter? When you're in up to the eyes, what does it matter if you go over your head?
human
In this case it would matter to Evie. That's my point. I have to protect her--to save her. There's no one but me to do it--and you.
gpt
Don't count on me, he said, savagely.
human
I've the right, in this wild beast's life, to seize anything I can snatch.