She was silent.
“Sometimes ... sometimes, too, I imagine that in doing this I am not behaving well to you, that in some way or other I offend or hurt you. Then I sit brooding about it, until I begin to think that it would be best to take leave of you for ever.”
She was still silent; motionless she sat, with her hands lying slackly in her lap, her head slightly bowed, a smile about her mouth.
“Speak to me,” he begged.
“You do not offend me, nor hurt me,” she said. “Come to me whenever you feel the need. Do always as you think best; and I shall think that best too: you must not doubt that.”
“I should so much like to know in what way you like me?”
“In what way? Surely, as a Madonna does a sinner who repents and gives her his soul,” she said, archly. “Am I not a Madonna?”
“Are you content to be so?”
“Can you be so ignorant about women as not to know how every one of us has a longing to solace and relieve, in fact, to play at being a Madonna?”
“Do not speak like that,” he said, with pain in his voice.