“That is my affair, mine alone, that you must not question, it has nothing to do with you, you are only a means to an end.”
He said, “What can I do for you?”
She smiled, a sudden smile, and under her cheek something flickered. “You can do nothing,” she said and stood up. “I must always do it all—yes, I shall be your mistress—wait,” she said raising her hand, and there was anger and pride in her. “Do not intrude now by word or sign, but tomorrow you will come to me—that is enough—that is all you can do,” and in this word “all” he felt a limit on himself that he had never known before, and he was frightened and disquieted and unhappy.
He came the next day, cringing a little, fawning, uneasy, and she would not see him—she sent word “I do not need you yet,” and he called again the next day and learned that she was out of town, then one Sunday she was in to him.
She said quietly to him, as if she were preparing him for a great disappointment, “I have deliberately, very deliberately, removed remorse from the forbidden fruit,” and he was abject suddenly and trembling.
“There will be no thorns for you,” she went on in a cold abrupt voice. “You will miss that, but do not presume to show it in my presence.”
“Also my floor is not the floor on which you may crawl,” she continued, “and I do not permit you to suffer while I am in the room—and,” she added, unfastening her brooch slowly and precisely, “I dislike all spiritual odours.”
“Are we all strange?” he whispered.
“It takes more than will to attain to madness.”
“Yes.”