“You! You!” he repeated with increasing fury.
“At least listen to me,” she murmured. “You will see that I have not compromised you in anything.”
Compromised! It was professional dignity of which he thought, truly!
“I do not want to listen to you; I shall not go.”
“Do not say that.”
“It only needed that you should dispose of me in your own way.”
“Victor!”
Anger carried him away.
“I belong to you, then! I am your thing! You do with me what you wish! You decide, and I have only to obey! There is too much of this! You can go; everything is at an end between us.”
She listened, crushed; but this last word, which struck her in her love, gave her strength. In her turn she took his hands, and although he wished to withdraw them, she held them closely in her own.