"Is it to be the thirteenth?"
"I never knew you to be like this before."
"May I count it as the thirteenth?"
Silence. I waited and glanced at the clock again. The whole morning had slipped away. I should infallibly be late for that luncheon, but I could not help it.
"Lucia!"
"What, Victor?"
"Is it the thirteenth?"
"I don't know."
"Then I tell you that it is."
Almost beside myself with irritation, and uncertain whether I most loved or detested her, I drew her violently round towards me, bent over her and pressed my lips on hers, wet, ice-cold, and quivering. If there is anything in magnetism, or power to subdue another's volition, it ought to have acted fully then. I myself was at that moment the incarnation of will. My whole system was bowed to the intense effort to make her, by force, say what I desired.