“Suppose I don’t want you to go?”
“That would make me go all the quicker.”
“You have a—a rather funny way of being in love,” she said. “I should think—”
“Now, see here,” he said, with a sort of desperation. “Won’t you let me alone? I’ve told you. I didn’t want to, but you made me. You can have all the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve—hurt me and humiliated me. And nothing’s going to be any good any more.”
“Why?” she enquired, in a reasonable tone. “There are so many things in your life.”
“I don’t want them. I don’t want anything but you. I’m—of course you don’t know and you don’t care. You’ll go home and laugh at the impudence of that vulgar—”
Andrée faced him, very angry.
“That is vulgar, if you like,” she said. “To imagine my doing that—laughing at you.”
She had come down to the edge of the water, beside him, very near him. She was contemptuous, she was indignant and hurt. And suddenly all that went. There, in that enchanted glen, with the moon on him, he was transfigured, or it may be revealed. There was nothing mean about him; his sensitiveness was no longer paltry, but tragic. He was no more and no less than a man; forlorn in his strength and his youth; betrayed by the world he fancied he had conquered. Tears came into her eyes; she laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Oh ...! I—laugh at you!” she said.