“Rather not!”
“Tell me, don’t you think India a horrible country?... Have you never been to Europe?”
“No.”
“I was there from ten to fifteen.... Properly speaking, you’re a brown native and I a white creole....”
“I love my country.”
“Yes, because you think yourself a bit of a Solo prince.... That’s your Patjaram nonsense.... As for me, I hate India, I loathe Labuwangi. I want to get away. I want to go to Paris.... Will you come too?”
“No. I should never want to go....”
“Not even when you reflect that there are hundreds of women in Europe whom you have never loved?”
He looked at her: something in her words, in her voice, made him glance up; a crazy hysteria, which had never struck him in the old days, when she had always been the silently passionate mistress, with half-closed eyes, who always wanted to forget everything at once and to become conventional again. Something in her repelled him. He loved the soft, pliant surrender of her caresses, the smiling indolence which she used to display, but not these half-mad eyes and this purple mouth, which seemed ready to bite. She seemed to feel this, for she suddenly pushed him from her and said, brusquely:
“You bore me.... I know all there is to know in you.... Go away....”