"What is there for me to see? Nothing, but that you don't know your own mind. Haven't I been patient enough, waiting for you to make it up? What's the good of going on saying you don't love me, when you know I've got love enough for me and you both? Can't you trust me? Can't you judge the size of what I feel for you, by the line I've took for very near a year? You loved me well enough back-along, and what did I ever do to choke you off? You can't tell me, because you don't know. Nobody knows. You bide here, and you understand I'm not changed and won't be blown away by all the rumours and lies on people's tongues; and you can let me live on in hell—for what? You don't know If you had a reason, you'd be just enough to grant I ought to hear it."
"Don't say that, Johnny. You never asked me for a reason more than I gave you from the first. I told you on New Bridge that I was bitter sorry, but I found my feeling for you was not the sort of love that can make a woman marry a man. And that was the sole reason then. And that reason is as good now as ever it was."
"It's no reason to anybody who knows you like what I do. Haven't you got any pity, or mercy in you, Dinah? Can you go on in cold blood ruining my life same as you are doing—for nothing at all? What does a woman want more than the faithful love and worship of a clean, honest man? Why did you stop loving me?"
"I never began, John; and if you say that reason's not enough, then—then I'll give you another reason. For anything's better than going on like this. To ask me for pity and mercy! Can't you see what you're doing—you, who was so proud? D'you want a woman to give herself up to you for pity and mercy? Be you sunk to that?"
"I'm sunk where it pleased you to sink me," he said; "and if you knew what love was, pity and mercy would rise to your heart to see anybody sinking that you could save."
"I do know what love is," she answered. "Yes, I know it now, though I never did till now. When I begged you to let me go, I didn't know anything except what I felt for you wasn't what it ought to be; but, since then, things are different; and I do well know what love is."
"That's something. If you've larned that, I'll hope yet you'll come to see what mine is."
"You can't love a man because he loves you, John. You may be just as like to love a man who hates you, or love where mortal power can't love back—as in your case. Where I've got now be this: I do love a man."
"You thought you loved me. Perhaps you're wrong again and was right before."
"I love a man, and he loves me; and nothing on God's earth will ever keep us apart unless it's death."