“Always—it has always been so!” she cried. “It has been one long battle between us—you fighting away from me.”
It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. The man’s heart stood still. Was this how she saw it?
“But we’ve had some perfect hours, some perfect times, when we were together!” he pleaded.
“Never!” she cried; “never! It has always been you fighting me off.”
“Not always—not at first!” he pleaded.
“Always, from the very beginning—always the same!”
She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast. He had wanted to say, “It has been good, but it is at an end.” And she—she whose love he had believed in when he had despised himself—denied that their love and ever been love. “He had always fought away from her?” Then it had been monstrous. There had never been anything really between them; all the time he had been imagining something where there was nothing. And she had known. She had known so much, and had told him so little. She had known all the time. All the time this was at the bottom of her!
He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and despised him. She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel.
“You ought to marry a man who worships you,” he said; “then you could do as you liked with him. Plenty of men will worship you, if you get on the private side of their natures. You ought to marry one such. They would never fight you off.”
“Thank you!” she said. “But don’t advise me to marry someone else any more. You’ve done it before.”
“Very well,” he said; “I will say no more.”
He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one. Their eight years of friendship and love, the eight years of his life, were nullified.
“When did you think of this?” she asked.
“I thought definitely on Thursday night.”
“I knew it was coming,” she said.
That pleased him bitterly. “Oh, very well! If she knew, then it doesn’t come as a surprise to her,” he thought.
“And have you said anything to Clara?” she asked.
“No; but I shall tell her now.”
There was a silence.
