Then she was silent for a while, thinking.
“I want to suffer,” he murmured, and trembled again.
“We are all gross at times, but this is not your time.”
“I could follow you into the wilderness.”
“I would not miss you.”
And it was said in a terrible forbidding voice.
“I suffer as a birthright—I want it to be something more my own than that.”
“What are you going to do?” he said.
“Does one ever destroy oneself who is utterly disinterested?”
“I don’t know.”