"What is it, then?"
"Can't you see, can't you feel that it's no use coming again, just for this? It'll never be what it was then. It'll always be like last night, and you'll think I don't care. Something's holding me back from you. Something that's happened to me. I don't know yet what it is."
"Nerves. Nothing but nerves."
"No. I thought it was nerves last night. I thought it was this room.
Those two poor ghosts, looking at us. I even thought it might be Mark and
Roddy—all of them—tugging at me to get me away from you…. But it
isn't that. It's something in me."
"You're trying to tell me you don't want me."
"I'm trying to tell you what happened. I did want you, all last year. It was so awful that I had to stop it. You couldn't go on living like that…. I willed and willed not to want you."
"So did I. All the willing in the world couldn't stop me."
"It isn't that sort of willing. You might go on all your life like that and nothing would happen. You have to find it out for yourself; and even that might take you all your life…. It isn't the thing people call willing at all. It's much queerer. Awfully queer."
"How—queer?"
"Oh—the sort of queerness you don't like talking about."