“Yes,” he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this.
“And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,” she said.
But he did not answer.
“You think, don’t you,” she said slowly, “that I only want physical things? It isn’t true. I want you to serve my spirit.”
“I know you do. I know you don’t want physical things by themselves. But, I want you to give me—to give your spirit to me—that golden light which is you—which you don’t know—give it me—”
After a moment’s silence she replied:
“But how can I, you don’t love me! You only want your own ends. You don’t want to serve me, and yet you want me to serve you. It is so one-sided!”
It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit.
“It is different,” he said. “The two kinds of service are so different. I serve you in another way—not through yourself—somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves—to be really together because we are together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.”
“No,” she said, pondering. “You are just egocentric. You never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You want yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be there, to serve you.”