“Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me. Have you, do you think?”
“No,” he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness and obstinacy.
“And you never will love me,” she said finally, “will you?”
There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear.
“No,” he said.
“Then,” she replied, “what have you against me!”
He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. “If only I could kill her,” his heart was whispering repeatedly. “If only I could kill her—I should be free.”
It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot.
“Why do you torture me?” he said.
She flung her arms round his neck.