“I exonerate you, Sorbet,” she said, “you needn’t go into details. What is yours and what is mine. My God! What does it matter? Not much!”
“I know you to be generous⸺”
“Leave that then! Leave these calculations! All that means so little to me! I feel at the end of my strength—au bout de force!” She always heaved this out with much energy. “If you’ve made up your mind to go—do so, Sorbet. I release you! You owe me nothing. It was all my fault. But spare me a reckoning. I can’t stand any more⸺”
“No, I insist on being responsible. We can’t leave things upside down—our books in an endless muddle, our desks open, and just walk away for ever—and perhaps set up shop somewhere else?”
“I do not feel in any mood to ‘set up shop somewhere else,’ I can assure you!”
The unbusinesslike element in the situation she had allowed to develop for obvious reasons. She now resisted his dishonest attempt to set this right, and benefit first, as he had done, by disorder, and lastly by order.
“We can’t, in any case, improve matters by talking. I—I, you needn’t fear for me, Sorbet. I can look after myself, only don’t let us wrangle,” with appealing gesture and saintlily smiling face, “let us part friends. Let us be worthy of each other.”
Bertha always opposed to Tarr’s images her Teutonic lyricism, usually repeating the same phrases several times.
This was degenerating into their routine of wrangle. Always confronted by this imperturbable, deaf and blind “generosity,” the day would end in the usual senseless “draw.” His words still remained unsaid.