“Why do you say all this?” he said heavily, floundering for words. “What does it mean? Nothing at all. You belong to me. You gave up Mitchell because I said you must. Have you given up Mitchell?”
“Yes.”
“Very well then. Nothing else matters. If I want a thing I will break through a Chinese wall to get it. Nothing can stop me, because when I want a thing it is mine already. I want it because it is mine already.”
He was making it impossible for her—impossible to go, impossible to stay, impossible to say anything.
Outside in the street the heavy drays went clattering by on the stone setts. When they had passed there came up the shrill cries of children playing in the street, the drone of a Rabbi taking a class of boys in Hebrew. On the hot air came the smell of the street—a smell of women and babies and leather and kosher meat.
“I know the way of women,” he said. “My mother has been my friend always. But I do not know your ways. I only know that I love you. You are mine as that picture is mine, and you cannot take yourself from me.”
“I don’t want to take myself from you,” she said, half angry, half in tears. “I want to make you understand me.”
“What is there to understand? Do I understand my pictures?” he cried. “Do you want no mystery? How can there be life without mystery? I don’t expect you to understand. I only want you to be honest and true to me. . . . I conceal nothing. I am a Jew. I live in this horrible place. My life is as horrible as this place. You know all that, all there is to know, and you love me. You cannot alter me. You cannot change my nature. . . .”
“Don’t say any more,” she said. “It only becomes worse with talking.”
“What becomes worse?”