"Didn't you ever ... love me ... at all?" he managed, at last.
"Ah!—you know whether I loved you...."
"You ... you mean ... I ... I've killed it?"
"Yes, dear."
"Oh, you are cruel ... you are cruel!..." he burst out. He stared at her, his face working. "You're the crudest woman God ever made!" he said huskily.
Sophy was white too. She, too, stammered a little.
"I ... I think ... that truth ... is nearly always cruel," she said. "But it's only truth that will make us free——"
His hands were gripping the sides of the chair into which he had sunk again, so that his arms trembled.
"Damn the truth, then...!" he said slowly and thickly.
"You'd want to keep a wife who doesn't love you as a wife should?"