“You will be offended if I reply.”
“Tell me, please.”
“If you wish,” he said nonchalantly. “To begin with, you are the most selfish person I have ever met. You are vain, conceited and a prig. Selfishness runs in all your veins. All your desires are selfish—all your aims are selfish—nay, nearly all your actions have been selfish. The only unselfish part of you was the part I compelled you to assimilate, and that was counterfeit.... God help any man you marry if he loves you. You will ruin him if you can. If you love him too, so much the worse for him.... Do you want me to go on?”
She bore all this with amazing calmness. True, she had been in some manner prepared for it, but she had not expected the denunciation to be so severe. What surprised her was that it did not hurt her as much as she had anticipated.
She did not answer his question.
“So you loved me against your will?” she said reflectively.
He nodded.
“Every woman likes to be loved like that,” she remarked daringly.
This speech of hers seemed to infuriate him. He stopped his walking and turned round to face her.
“If you can extract any satisfaction from the knowledge that I loved you against my will, have it!” he cried bitterly. “Nay, I’ll even say this: I love you passionately at this very moment. Take my love!—do what you like with it!—it is no concern of mine when it has once been given to you! ... I tried once to give you intellectual and spiritual sympathy—you showed me that was no use to you! You wanted my love! Well, now you have it, so be satisfied if you can! You have it, and also my profound dislike and contempt!”