He waved this aside. “I couldn't believe it—I wouldn't believe it until somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did you do it?”
“Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want them to win—against you!” She lifted her head and looked at him, and in spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her defiance.
“Because you love me!” he said.
“Because I hate you,” she answered.
And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic—her logic.
“Listen!” he pleaded. “I tried to forget you—I tried to keep myself going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that something had happened. It wasn't my fault—” he pulled himself up abruptly.
“I found out what men were like,” she said. “A man made my sister a woman of the streets—that's what you've done to me.”
He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear.
“I'm not that kind of a man,” he said.
But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying.