“It isn’t quite true,” he said. “And even so, you shouldn’t say it.”
“It is true—it is true,” she wept, “and I won’t be bullied by his pretending it’s love—when it isn’t—he doesn’t care, how can he—no, he can’t—”
He sat in silence. She moved him beyond himself.
“Then you shouldn’t rouse him, if he can’t,” replied Birkin quietly.
“And I have loved him, I have,” she wept. “I’ve loved him always, and he’s always done this to me, he has—”
“It’s been a love of opposition, then,” he said. “Never mind—it will be all right. It’s nothing desperate.”
“Yes,” she wept, “it is, it is.”
“Why?”
“I shall never see him again—”
“Not immediately. Don’t cry, you had to break with him, it had to be—don’t cry.”