“Do you know, I love you more than you love me?”
“But why?”
“Because I have written ten times to you, and you only eight times to me.”
“Well, next time I will write twenty times to you.”
“No, no. I do not want even one letter. Another time, if you will let me, I will come with you. I will not be away from you; I cannot bear it.”
⁂
They were seated at table at the usual hour, calm and happy, with no one but themselves.
They never sat facing each other, but side by side, because even during meal times they felt the necessity of caressing and kissing each other.
Toward the middle of dinner she said, all at once, as if the words had been held back, and were now forced from her by some internal and invisible spring:
“Do you know that Lieutenant B. came again at five this evening to pay me a visit?”