“You mean you don’t want me?” he said.
“You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so little fineness. You are so crude. You break me—you only waste me—it is horrible to me.”
“Horrible to you?” he repeated.
“Yes. Don’t you think I might have a room to myself, now Ursula has gone? You can say you want a dressing room.”
“You do as you like—you can leave altogether if you like,” he managed to articulate.
“Yes, I know that,” she replied. “So can you. You can leave me whenever you like—without notice even.”
The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind, he could hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame him, he felt he must lie on the floor. Dropping off his clothes, he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plunging as if he were lying upon a black, giddy sea. He lay still in this strange, horrific reeling for some time, purely unconscious.
At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to him. He remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but unconscious.
She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body, and laid her cheek against his hard shoulder.
“Gerald,” she whispered. “Gerald.”