"One would think it was an animal rolled round the branch, gnawing at it. It isn't nice to look at."
She rested her head on her lover's shoulder, saying in a languid tone:
"I love you."
He drew her down upon the sofa. She felt him, kneeling at her feet, his hands, clumsy with impatience, gliding over her, and she suffered his attempts, inert, discouraged, foreseeing that it was useless. Her ears were ringing like a little bell. The ringing ceased, and she heard; on her right, a strange, clear, glacial voice say. "I forbid you to belong to one another." It seemed to her that the voice spoke from above, in the glow of light, but she did not dare to turn her head. It was an unfamiliar voice. Involuntarily and despite herself she tried to remember his voice, and she realized that she had forgotten its sound, and that she could never again remember it. The thought came to her "Perhaps this is the voice he has now." Terrified, she swiftly pushed her skirt over her knees. But she refrained from crying out, and she did not speak of what she had just heard, lest she should be taken for a madwoman, and because she realized somehow that it was not real.
Ligny drew away from her.
"If you don't want anything more to do with me, say so honestly. I am not going to take you by force."
Sitting upright, with her knees pressed together, she told him:
"Whenever we are in a crowd, as long as there are people about us, I want you, I long for you, but as soon as we are by ourselves I am afraid."
He replied by a cheap, spiteful sneer: