"How do you know she's pretty?"
"That's how I see her. Very pretty, very soft and tender. Shy at first, and then very gently, very innocently letting herself go. And always rather sensuous and clinging."
"Poor idiot—she's done for if she clings. I'm not sorry for George, Jinny; I'm sorry for the woman. He'll lay her flat on the floor and wipe his boots on her."
Jane shrank back. "Nina," she said, "you loved him. And yet—you can tear him to pieces."
"You think I'm a beast, do you?"
"Yes. When you tear him—and before people, too."
She shrank a little further. Nina was now sitting on the floor with her back against Jane's knees.
"It's all very well for you," she said. "He wanted to care for you. He only wanted me—to care. That's what he is. He makes you care, he makes you show it, he drives you on and on. He gives nothing; he takes nothing. But he lets you strip yourself bare; he lets you bring him the soul out of your body, and then he turns round and treats you as if you were his cast-off mistress."
She laid her head back on Jane's knee, so that Jane saw her face foreshortened and, as it were, distorted.
"If I had been—if I'd been like any other woman, good or bad, he'd have been different."