"You've forgotten and I haven't. You don't know what an appalling thing you're doing. You're leaving everything and everybody you ever cared for. You'll die of sheer unhappiness."
"Nonsense, Eliot. You know perfectly well that people don't die of unhappiness. They die of accidents and diseases and old age. I shall die of old age. And I'll be back in twenty years' time if I've seen it through."
"Twenty years. The best years of your life. You'll be desperately lonely. You don't know what it'll be like."
"Oh yes, I do. I've been lonely before now. And I've saved myself by working."
"Yes, in England, where you could see some of us sometimes. But out there, with people you never saw before—people who may be brutes—"
"They needn't be."
He went on relentlessly. "People you don't care for and never will care for. You've never really cared for anybody but us."
"I haven't. I'm going because I care. I can't let Jerry go on like that.
I've got to end it."
"You're going simply to save Jerrold. So that you can never go back to him. Don't you see that if you married me you'd both be safe? You couldn't go back. If you were married to me Jerrold wouldn't take you from me. If you were married to me you wouldn't break faith with me. If you had children you wouldn't break faith with them. Nothing could keep you safer."
"I can't, Eliot. Nothing's changed. I belong to Jerrold. I always have belonged to him. It isn't anything physical. Even if I'm separated from him, thousands of miles, I shall belong to him still. My mind, or soul, or whatever the thing is, can't get away from him…. You say if I belonged to you I couldn't give myself to Jerrold. If I belong to Jerrold, how can I give myself to you?"