"What about the little girl in the tea-shop at Sitka?"
"I don't think I loved her. I wanted her as an experience."
"Is it not just the same with me?"
"No, it isn't. It's quite different. Do not worry me with questions,
Viola. Kiss me and tell me you love me."
She raised herself suddenly on one elbow and leant over me, kissing me on the eyes and lips, all over my face, with passionate intensity.
"I do love you. You are like my life to me, but I know I ought not to marry you. I should absorb you. You would love me. You would not want to be unfaithful to me. But fidelity to one person is madness an impossibility to an artist if he is to reach his highest development. It can't be. We must not think of it."
The blood went to my head in great waves. The supreme tenderness of a moment back seemed gone, her words had roused another phase of passion, the harsh fury of it.
"I don't care about the art, I don't care about anything. You shall marry me. I will make you love me."
"You don't understand. If you were fifty-eight I would marry you directly."
"You shall marry me before then," I answered, and kissed her again and put my hands up to her soft-haired head to pull it down to my breast and dragged loose some of its soft coils.