Violet gave a quick little sigh. “At the risk of repeating myself, you really are cruel,” she said. “When you love, you have to say it again and again. You might as well say that if you’re hungry you mustn’t ask for something to eat, because you ate something yesterday.... It’s a permanent need of life. I hope you don’t think I’m breaking up because I have told you more than once that I rather like you.”
“Poor Vi! Sadly changed!” said Colin, teasing her.
“I have changed,” she said, “but not sadly. We’re both changed, you know, Colin. A year ago we no more thought of falling in love with each other than of killing each other. But I don’t call the change sad.”
Colin felt extremely amiable this evening, pleasantly fatigued by his walk, and pleasantly exhilarated by his dinner, but he had to stir up his brains to find a suitable reply. There was the unfair part of it; Violet talked on this topic without effort; indeed, it was an effort for her not to, whereas he had to think....
“But you call it serious,” he said. “I mustn’t laugh about it, and I mustn’t weep. What am I to do?”
“Nothing, darling. I want you just to be.”
He determined not to let his amiability be ruffled.
“I certainly intend to ‘be’ as long as ever I can,” he said. “I love being. It’s wonderfully agreeable to be. And I would much sooner be here than at Cambridge with Raymond.”
“Ah, poor Raymond!” said Violet.
That exasperated Colin; to pity or to like Raymond appeared to him a sin against hate.