"It's late."
"Yes."
"It goes fast."
"Very."
They spoke mechanically, and then not at all. The dread of the morning was too poignant to approach the things that must be said. Suddenly, with the savage directness of the male to plunge into the pain which must be undergone, he began:
"It was like poison—that kiss."
She turned, forgetting her own anguish in the pain in his voice, murmuring, "Ben, my poor Ben."
"So you will go—to-morrow," he said bitterly, "back to the great public that will possess you, and I shall remain—here, alone."
"It must be so."
He felt suddenly an impulse he had not felt before, an instinct to make her suffer a little. He said brutally: