"I?"
"Could you ever be foolish about me?"
For a moment his joy seemed to be clouded by a faint and creeping doubt, as if he were mentally comparing her condition of heart with his, and as if the comparison were beginning—only just beginning—dimly to distress him. She knew just how he was feeling, and she leaned against him, making her body feel weak.
"I don't want to," she said.
"Why not?"
Already the cloud was evaporating.
"I don't want to suffer. I want to be happy now in the short time I have left for happiness."
"Why do you say 'the short time'?"
"I'm not young any more. And I've suffered enough in my life."
"But through me! How could you suffer? Don't you trust me completely even yet?"