"Angelica!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica, why did I speak that way to you? When I’ve been longing and longing——”
"Better stop!" she said. "I’d rather have you talk that way than any other."
He had turned and was walking by her side.
"Don’t you see?" he said. "All this bitterness and wrangling—it’s all part of the same thing—part of our love for each other. It’s the exasperation, the rage, of frustration. When we’re apart we suffer so, and in our suffering we blindly try to hurt each other."
"Do you mean to say you’re trying to pretend that we love each other?" she cried.
"Yes," he said. "We do. We can’t stop. We’re mates. We complete each other. We’re made for each other. Even when I’m hating you so that I could wring your neck, I know in my soul it’s only a phase of love."
"Well," she said, "it’s not, with me."
But she was trembling with a mysterious and unfathomable emotion—a wicked and irresistible feeling of kinship with this man. Not love, not tenderness, not any feeling that she could name; only this conviction that they were bound up together, that they could never be strangers, that it was against nature that they should part.
"Marry Eddie, if you like," he went on. "I don’t care. You’re mine. You can be his wife; it won’t matter. You won’t love him. You’ll love me. I’ll be your lover!"
Her face flamed.