"I know nothing," he said, and then in a sudden husky outburst of avowal: "There is only one thing I want to know. I 've told you what it is. Have you nothing to say in return?"
The unavailing exertion of trying to raise his lead-heavy voice clear of a low whisper made him stop to cough—the hard, dry cough that weeks of patient nursing and nights of anxious solicitude had taught Pam to know so well.
"Nothing ... that I should like to say," Pam answered unsteadily. "Nothing that you would wish to hear me say. I thought ... I 'd said everything. Oh, please ... don't ask me to say any more. It might only make things worse."
He swallowed time upon time in slow succession.
"And this is the end of all my waiting?"
"If you 'll let it, please, it is," Pam begged him, very pleadingly for herself; very sorrowfully for him.
"I can't let it," he blurted after a while. "You don't know what you are asking of me. I can't give you up."
"But I 'm not yours to give," Pam protested, with an awed voice, at this unexpected assumption of possession.
"Whose are you?" he cried
"Nobody's, of course," Pam said, in meek submission, "except my own."