"Do you think you could have stopped me?"
"I don't know. Couldn't I? I've stopped other men.... I shouldn't have
let you. But it was so delightful--to be really loved by you! All my
pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me
really a woman, with a place among other women--to be loved by such a
man as you ... and I was not selfish about it; I did ask you whether
it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I
was very wrong, Clive--very foolish, very wrong! Because it is
making you restless and unhappy--"
"If you could only love me a little in return!"
"I don't know how to love you except the way I am doing--"
"There is a more vital emotion--"
"It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I
do."
"If you could only respond with a little tenderness--"
"I do respond--as well as I know how," she said piteously.
He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips: "I know, dear. I don't mean to complain."
"Oh, Clive! I have let you fall in love with me and it is making you
miserable! And now it's making me miserable, too, because you are
disappointed in me."
"No--"
"You are! I'm not what you expected--not what you wanted--"
"You are everything I want!--if I could only wake your heart!" he said
in a low tense voice.
"It isn't my heart that is asleep.... I know what you miss in me....
And I can't help it. I--I don't wish to help it--or to be different."
She dropped her head against his shoulder. After a few moments she
spoke from there in a muffled, childish voice: "What can I do about it? I don't want to be your mistress, Clive.... I
never wanted to do--anything--like that."
A deeper colour burnt his face. He said: "Could you love me enough to
marry me if I managed to free myself?"
"I have never thought of marrying you, Clive. It isn't that I couldn't
love you--that way. I suppose I could. Probably I could. Only--I don't
know anything about it--"
"Let me try to free myself, anyway."
"How is it possible?"
He said, exasperated: "Do you suppose I can endure this sort of
existence forever?"
The swift tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't know--I don't know," she
faltered. "I thought this existence of ours ideal. I thought you were
going to be happy; I supposed that our being together again would
bring happiness to us both. It doesn't! It is making us wretched. You
are not contented with our friendship!" She turned on him
passionately: "I don't wish to be your mistress. I don't want you to
make me wish to be. No girl naturally desires less than she is
entitled to, or more than the law permits--unless some man teaches her
to wish for it. Don't make such a girl of me, Clive! You--you are
beginning to do it. And I don't wish it! Truly I don't!"