She put out her hand and laid it in his.
“I want you, my Alice.” He was looking into her eyes and she into his. “I need you. I can’t do without you.”
She smiled with an expression of happiness. “Is it wrong,” she asked, “to take pleasure in another’s pain? I see that you are in pain, that you suffer. And, oh, it makes me happy, so happy.”
“Don’t,” he begged. “Please don’t.”
“But listen,” she went on. “Don’t you see why? Because I—because I love you. There,” she was smiling again. “I promised myself I never, never would say it first. And I’ve broken my word.”
“What do you mean?”
“For nearly four years—all the years I’ve really lived—I have had only one thought—my love for you. But I never would say it, never would say ‘I love you,’ because I knew that you did not love me.”
He was beginning to speak but she lifted her hand to his lips. Then she put it back in his and pushed her fingers up his coat-sleeve until they were hidden, resting upon his bare arm.
“No, you did not.” Her voice was low and the words came slowly. “But since we came here, you have loved me. If I were to get well, were to go back, you would not. Ah, if you knew, if you only knew how I have wanted your love, how I have lain awake night after night, hour after hour, whispering under my breath ‘I love you. I love you. Why do you not love me?’”
Howard put his head down so that his face was hid from her in her lap.