Once again, and more violently, his anger, his resentment at the cruelty of it, boiled over.
"No, I have not finished," he said. "I am here to tell you that you have done an infernally cruel thing, for I take it that it was to separate Miss Daisy and me that you did it. You have been completely successful, but—but for me it has been rather expensive. I gave you my heart, I tell you. And you stamped on it. I can't mend it."
Then that died out and his voice trembled.
"It's broken," he said—"just broken."
Jeannie put out her hands towards him in supplication.
"I am sorry," she said.
"I tell you that is no good," he said, and on the words his voice broke again. "Oh, Jeannie, is it final? Is it really true? For Heaven's sake tell me that you have been playing this jest, trick—what you like—on me, to test me, to see if I really loved you. You made me love you—you taught me what love meant. I have seen and judged the manner of my past life, and—and I laid it all down, and I laid myself down at your feet, so that you and love should re-make me."
Jeannie leant forward over the table, hiding her face in her hands.
"Oh, stop—for pity's sake stop," she said. "I have had a good deal to bear. I never guessed you would love me like that; I only meant you, at first, to be attracted by me, as you have been by other women. It is true that I was determined that you should not marry Daisy, and I knew that if you really got to love her nothing would stand in your way. I had to make it impossible for you to fall in love with her. It was to save you and her."
Jeannie felt she was losing her head; the sight of this man in his anger and his misery confused and bewildered her. She got up suddenly.