"It was before I met you. Will you let me finish? I want to tell you. It's not your fault. It's something in myself. Don't think I'm blaming you. You've never seen me, Basil. You've seen a woman who likes being spoilt, who likes being loved, who knows how to get what she wants, and yet contrives to do it with a kind of fiendish decency, for I haven't a blatant fashion of alluring. And you've seen the other woman who likes power. Perhaps it is the same woman on her more intellectual side. Yes, power! When I look back, I see that it is a distorted kind of power I've wanted. And to know one's self loved is to have power. You see how I was tempted, yet I did not know that I was falling. Now I know—and there's an end to it. I have to ask your pardon for making you the victim, and to—to thank you for all your sweetness—too much sweetness."
She was like a bit of smiling steel, he thought—a sword, sorry to have to wound, yet bound to do it. He had no hope of mastering her, though he saw pity dragged from her heart into her eyes. He was haggard. She had been right to call him victim.
"But why after last night?" he asked.
"It had to be some time, hadn't it? Before marriage, or after it."
"But why last night? There's something you're not telling me."
"Haven't I said enough?"
"You needn't be afraid of hurting. I shall be glad of it."
She nodded comprehension. "I had a fight last night. I had to give you all my confidences or none, and I wanted to keep you because I like you, and because I'd entangled you with some of my dearest thoughts. But it was hard to tell you what I was going to tell you, and then you wouldn't listen, and you made me laugh, and I saw—oh, clearly—that you would never have understood, and I felt—oh, must I tell you?—I felt I'd saved something very precious from destruction. And so there was an end."
He was sitting on the dusty, wooden bench, staring before him.
"If only there weren't any people," she said for him. He started. "It's hateful for you, dear. All those good friends of yours, looking so sorrowful and being so curious. Oh, I am sorry! You can tell them anything you like about me, and nothing will be bad enough."