"Take care what you're doing! Do you want to drown yourself?"
"I don't know. I shouldn't mind, I think," she answered tonelessly.
His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had righted himself, he set her from him. But it could not be undone: he had had her in his arms, had felt all her weight on him. The sensation seemed to take his strength away: after the long, black, silent evening, her body was doubly warm, doubly real. He walked her back, along the deserted streets, at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. She was very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost physical suffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; but when her eyes did chance to rest on him, she was swept by such a sense of nervous irritation that she hated the sight of him, as he walked before her.
Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the sofa; when the lamp was lighted and set on the table; when he still stood there, pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise came to an abrupt decision. Advancing to the table, she leaned her hands on it, and bending forward, raised her white face to his.
"You told me you were going away; why do you not go? Why have you not already gone?" she asked, and her mouth was hard. "I am waiting ... expecting to hear."
His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous.
"Louise!—can't you forgive me?—for what I said the other night?"
"I have nothing to forgive," she replied, coldly in spite of herself. "You said you must go. I can't keep you here against your will."
"It has made you angry with me. I have made you unhappy."
"You are making us both unhappy," she said in a low voice. "Now, it is I who say, things can't go on like this."