"Did you hear what I said?"
Looking at him affectionately she answered:
"Yes."
And he understood that she would rather die than give in to him. Before this "yes" he had embraced and kissed her sometimes; she struggled with him, but her resistance was becoming feebler, and he cherished the hope that some day she would yield, and that then her woman's instinct would help him to conquer. But now he understood that that would not be victory, but enslavement, and from that day on he ceased to appeal to the woman in her.
So he wandered with her in the dark circle of her life's horizon, lit all the beacons before her that he could; but she listened to him with the dreamy smile of the blind, saw nothing, believed him not.
Once she said:
"I understand sometimes that all you say is possible, but I think that is because I love you! I understand, but I do not believe, I cannot believe! As soon as you go away all that is of you goes away too."
This drama lasted nearly two years, and then the girl's health broke down: she became seriously ill. He gave up his employment, ceased to attend to the work of his organisation, got into debt. Avoiding his comrades, he spent his time wandering round her lodgings; or sat at her bedside, watching her wasting from disease and becoming more transparent every day, noting how the fire of fever glowed more and more brightly in her eyes.
"Speak to me of life, of the future," she asked him.
But he spoke of the present, enumerating vindictively everything that crushes us, all those things against which he was vowed to a lifelong struggle; he spoke of things that ought to be cast out of mens lives, as one discards soiled and worn-out rags.