“I never thought you only wanted me for that.”
“You came to me. I didn’t ask you to come.”
“But I do love you so. I only want you to love me a little.”
“I don’t know how to love a little. When I love it is with the whole of me, and it is for always.”
“But can’t we be pals, just pals? We’ve been such pals.”
“I’m sick to death of it all,” he said violently, “sick to death. You’re the best girl in London, Jessie, but it’s no good—it’s no good.”
Clowes and the young man ostentatiously and with a great clatter went higher up the stairs, but neither Jessie nor Mendel heard them. The pain and the shame they were suffering absorbed them.
“I never thought,” said Jessie, “it was near the end. I’ve always known when it was near the end before. It is like being struck by lightning.”
Mendel was silent. He could do nothing. There was nothing to be said. Jessie had consoled him, comforted him, but she had only made his suffering worse. By the side of Morrison she simply did not exist, and it had been a lie to pretend that she did. That lie must be cut out.
“I never thought you only wanted me for that,” she repeated, and began to move slowly down the stairs. At the bend she stopped and looked up at him, gave a little muffled cry, and moved slowly down into the dim lobby of the house.