"But that is the worst of all delusions, for we have done it. We've gotten out of Washington at last, and if we can do that, we can go on."
"Where would we go."
"To your people in the mountains. And after that—"
"It has never happened."
Grimly he answered, "They have always told you this—that it could not happen. Perhaps that is why it has never happened before. Perhaps it is part of your people's philosophy of death, your hankering after death—perhaps they were afraid to have it happen, Nedra! For nothing is impossible when men are willing to endure, and to dare, and most of all to think."
"It cannot happen, O'Hara."
"It's going to happen now," he warned. "And since I must, I shall make it happen in the one way that you really understand. Give me your hand."
"I can't—"
Deliberately, he swung his open palm sharply against her face. Nor this time did he loathe himself for striking her. He struck again, and as her chin came slowly up, he said, "Yes, Nedra, yes, it's happening," knowing that if he could dislodge her one obsessive thought—and he was doing it—she would become again the Nedra he had met and conquered in that mountain amphitheater months before.
He was being very calm, a paradox of gentle brutality and masculinity, when her own hand shot out and seized his throat.