She got up, came to the sofa with a sort of listless decision, and sat down beside him. He took her uninjured hand. His hand was burning with heat. He closed and unclosed his fingers as he went on speaking.
“What is there in such a relation as ours if it carries no rights? You have altered my whole life. Is that nothing? I live out here only because of you. I have nothing out here but you. All these months, ever since we left Buyukderer, I’ve lived just as you wished. I went into society at Buyukderer because you wished me to. When you didn’t care any more about my doing that I lived in the shade in Galata. I’ve fallen in with every deception you thought necessary, I’ve told every lie you wished me to tell. Ever since you made me lie to Jimmy I haven’t cared much. But you’ll never know, because you can’t understand such things, what the loss of Jimmy’s confidence and respect has meant to me. However, that’s all past. I’m as much of a hypocrite as you are; I’m as false as you are; I’m as rotten as you are—with other people. But don’t, for God’s sake, let’s be rotten with each other. That would be too foul, like thieves falling out.”
“I’ve always been perfectly straight with you,” she said coldly. “I have nothing to reproach myself with.”
The closing of his fingers on her hand, and their unclosing, irritated her whole body. To-day she disliked his touch intensely, so intensely that she could scarcely believe she had ever liked it, longed for it, schemed for it.
“Please keep your hand still!” she said.
“What?”
“It makes me nervous your doing that. Either hold my hand or don’t hold it.”
“I don’t understand. What was I doing?”
“Oh, never mind. I’ve always been straight with you. I don’t know why you are attacking me.”
“I feel you are changing towards me. So I thought I’d tell you that I don’t intend to be driven out a second time by a child. It’s better you should know that. Then you won’t attempt the impossible.”