He laughed on a high note of contempt.
“You deceive yourself,” he said. “Do you think I don’t know you? Do you think I live with my eyes shut? If you were to confess that your idea of love is a means of obtaining security against life, I’d believe you. In other words—you like me in my brutal moods, don’t you?—if I asked you to marry me, you would serve me for what I would give you in return. Is that what you mean by service?”
“You believe, then, I would accept your invitation if you asked me to marry you?”
“Most assuredly. Let’s finish this subtle, month-old fight of ours, and speak in plain words.”
“But we understand each other so well without plain words!” she protested.
“Do we? I wonder. Tell me, then: why don’t I ask you to marry me?”
“Because you don’t love me. Your body merely aches for mine. You suffer, I know.”
“Yes, I do,” he acknowledged; “but I can endure pain. Most men can’t: that is why they are willing to incur the discomfort and long penance of marriage—anything rather than continue to suffer.”
“Then why don’t you go away? Why don’t you leave me altogether?”
But he did not answer.