"Yes, and why?" he cried. "Ask yourself why I You are unjust, as only a woman can be. You say there's a part of me you don't know. If that's true, what does it mean? It means you don't want to know it. You don't want it even to exist. You want everything to belong to you. You don't care for me well enough to be interested in that side of my life which has nothing to do with you. Your love isn't strong enough for that."
"Love!—need we talk about love?" Her face was so unhappy that it seemed to have grown years older. "Love is something quite different. It takes everything just as it is. You have never really loved me.".
"I have never really loved you?"
He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, and with his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slipping from under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she had said, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yards from him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life; Louise sat there, and with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts on his love for her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated.
"I not love you!"
His voice was rough, had escaped control. "You have only to lift your finger, and I'll throw myself from that window on to the pavement."
Louise sat as if turned to stone.
"Don't you hear?" he cried more loudly. "Look up! ... tell me to do it!"
Still she did not move.
"Louise, Louise!" he implored, throwing himself down before her. "Speak to me! Don't you hear me?—Louise!"