“What more d’you want?” he asked bitterly. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve ruined my whole life?”
“You don’t love me?”
“I never loved you.”
“Why did you marry me?”
“Because you made me.”
“You never loved me?” she repeated, entirely crushed now, trembling and faint with fear. “Even at the beginning?”
“Never. It’s too late now to keep it in. I must tell you and have done with it. You’ve been having it out for months—now it’s my turn.”
“But I love you, Basil,” she cried passionately, going to him to put her arms round his neck. “I’ll make you love me.”
But he shrank away.
“For God’s sake, don’t touch me! . . . Oh, Jenny, let us finish with it. I’m very sorry. I don’t wish to be unkind to you, but you must have seen that—that I didn’t care for you. What’s the good of going on hum-bugging and pretending and making ourselves utterly miserable?”