"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it."
"All right—only—it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give it up?"
"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to that."
"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it you—whatever it is—if you won't tell me anything about it? What do you want, dear?"
"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this."
"What do you feel like?"
"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house."
"And is that my fault?" he asked gently.
"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just now."
"Good God, what a thing to say!"