“You loved me once,” he rejoined, “before you threw me over.”
She uttered a short, hard sigh. “I hadn’t even begun to know the meaning of the word.”
He flung round savagely. “There’s someone else in the field. I suspected it before. Who is it? That maniac at Tetherstones?”
She leaned forward a little further to the glow. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Even if it were so, it wouldn’t really count, would it?”
“It would not,” he rejoined curtly.
“So why discuss it?” said Frances.
Her weariness sounded again in her voice, but there was no weakness with it, rather a species of solitary majesty upon which he could not intrude. Yet, baffled, he still sought to penetrate her defences.
“You loved me once,” he repeated doggedly. “What did I ever do to forfeit your love?”
She turned suddenly as she sat, and faced him, pale, with burning eyes of accusation.
“I will tell you what you did. You desecrated my love. You killed it at birth. You treated me then—as you are treating me now—dishonourably. You gave me stones for bread, and you are doing it still. I think you are incapable of anything else. Love—real love—is out of your reach!”