“But we do.”
Mrs. Aldwinkle suddenly changed her tactics. “And what makes you so anxious all at once to run away from me?” she asked. “Can’t you bear to stay with me a moment longer? Am I so intolerable and odious and … and … brutal and….” She clawed at the air. “Do you hate me so much that….”
“Aunt Lilian!” protested Irene, who had begun to cry in earnest.
Mrs. Aldwinkle, with that tactlessness, that lack of measure that were characteristic of her, went on piling question upon rhetorical question, until in the end she completely spoiled the effect she had meant to achieve, exaggerating into ludicrousness what might otherwise have been touching. “Can’t you bear me? Have I ill-treated you? Tell me. Have I bullied you, or scolded you, or … or not given you enough to eat? Tell me.”
“How can you talk like that, Aunt Lilian?” Irene dabbed her eyes with a corner of her dressing-gown. “How can you say that I don’t love you? And you were always telling me that I ought to get married,” she added, breaking out into fresh tears.
“How can I say that you don’t love me?” echoed Mrs. Aldwinkle. “But is it true that you’re longing to leave me as soon as possible? Is that true or not? I merely ask what the reason is, that’s all.”
“But the reason is that we want to get married; we love each other.”
“Or that you hate me,” Mrs. Aldwinkle persisted.
“But I don’t hate you, Aunt Lilian. How can you say such a thing? You know I love you.”
“And yet you’re anxious to run away from me as fast as you possibly can,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. “And I shall be left all alone, all alone.” Her voice trembled; she shut her eyes, she contorted her face in an effort to keep it closed and rigid. Between her eyelids the tears came welling out. “All alone,” she repeated brokenly. Getting old, said the little clock on the mantel-piece, getting old, getting old.