“I have happened, I and my miserable disgusting mind and brain and temperament. That’s all!”
“You are very severe on yourself.”
“Tell me—have you ever been severe on me in your mind? You don’t really know me. Nobody does or ever will. But you know me what is called well. Have you ever been mentally severe, hard on me?”
“Yes, sometimes,” he answered gravely.
She felt suddenly rather cold, and she knew that his answer had surprised her. She had certainly expected him to say, “Never, my dear!”
“I thought so,” she said.
And, while saying it, she was scarcely conscious that she was telling a lie.
“But you must not think that such thoughts about you ever make the least difference in my feeling for you,” he said. “That has never changed, never could change.”
“Oh—I don’t know!” she said in a rather hard voice. “Everything can change, I think.”
“No.”