"That is not quite true," he said.
"It is true. I have always had copper and I have always wanted gold,"
she answered.
He controlled himself, to prove to himself that she lied, that he was
not the eternal egoist she dubbed him. Sometimes he had been genuinely
unselfish, sometimes--not often, perhaps, but sometimes--he had really
sunk himself in her. She was not being quite just. But how could she
be quite just to-night? An almost reckless feeling overtook him, a
desire to conquer at all costs in this struggle; to win her back,
whether against her will or not, to her old self; to eliminate the
shocking impression made upon her soul by the discovery of that day,
to wipe it out utterly, to replace it with another; to revive within
her that beautiful enthusiasm which had been as a light always shining
for her and from her upon people and events and life; to make her
understand, to prove to her that, after all allowance has been made
for uncertainties and contradictions of fate, for the ironies, the
paradoxes, the cruelties, the tragedies, and the despairs of
existence, the great, broad fact emerges, that what the human being
gives, in the long run the human being generally gets, and that she
who persistently gives gold will surely at last receive it.
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