"There was a—a certain amount of trouble and difficulty about it—"
"And what did that mean?"
"It only meant that I had to work rather hard to put it right. I liked it, so you needn't think anything of that. But if you persist in your refusal all my hard work goes for nothing." He was so powerless against her tender obstinacy that he had determined to appeal to her tenderness alone. "There were about three years of it, the best three years out of my life; and you are going to fling them away and make them useless. All for a little wretched scruple. This is the only argument that will appeal to you; or I wouldn't have mentioned it."
"The best years out of your life—why were they the best?"
"Because they were the first in which I was free."
She thought of the time nine years ago when she had taken from him three days, the only days when he was free, and how she had tried to make restitution and had failed. "And whatever else I refuse," she said, "I've taken them? I can't get out of that?"
"No. If you want to be very cruel you can say I'd no business to lay you under the obligation, but you can't get out of it."
She looked away. Did she want to be very cruel? Did she want to get out of it? Might it not rather be happiness to be in it, immersed in it? Lost in it, with all her scruples and all her pride?
His voice broke and trembled into passion. "And what is it that I'm asking you to take? Something that isn't mine and is yours; something that it would be dishonourable of me to keep. But if it was mine, it would be a little thing compared with what I wanted to give you and you wouldn't have."
Her hands in her distress had fallen to their old unconscious trick of stroking and caressing the thing they held, the one thing that he had given her, that she had not refused. His eyes followed her movements. She looked up and saw the jealous hunger in them.