"I'm sorry. I'm a brute. But it's your fault. You know what you can do with me," he said chokingly.
"Get up!" said her exhausted voice. "Get up, do! Go away. You see you are ... impossible. I thought you had improved, but you see it's all ... just as bad as ever."
"Millie!"
"Don't touch me."
"You know I am not such a hound as to think I have any hold ... or to use it, if I had?"
"What does it matter to me?" She moved: he held a fold of her gown. "Are you going to detain me?" she asked. "Because if so, I shall call Mrs. Barrett. This is not love—oh, no, nor anything like it; it's simply your fixed determination to have your own way. I've always known it, all these years—that you were not beaten, that you meant to try again. Not for love of me, but simply because to conquer me is your fixed idea. And this afternoon you thought you had succeeded. Well, you haven't, that's all."
He got to his feet, utterly humbled, reduced to abject pleading:
"Millie, see me again! Don't let it end here! I've lost my head, and don't know what I am saying. Give me a chance to talk things out—"
"Never, never, never!" she shuddered, making for the door. There she turned upon him. "You are a savage! If you knew how I hate savagery! You are a Boer! If you knew how I hate the Boers! I'll marry a man who knows how to treat a woman, not one whose civilisation is only skin-deep." He took two maddened strides towards her. "Has that hurt you? Very well, then, you can kill me, you know. I wonder you don't."
He passed a hand over his hair like one pushing a veil from his eyes.