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‘I don’t know why you don’t—I’ve been good to you. You
were in a FEARFUL state when you came to me.’
Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong
and unrelenting.
‘When was I in a fearful state?’ he asked.
‘When you first came to me. I HAD to take pity on you.
But it was never love.’
It was that statement ‘It was never love,’ which sounded
in his ears with madness.
‘Why must you repeat it so often, that there is no love?’
he said in a voice strangled with rage.
‘Well you don’t THINK you love, do you?’ she asked.
He was silent with cold passion of anger.
‘You don’t think you CAN love me, do you?’ she repeated
almost with a sneer.
‘No,’ he said.
‘You know you never HAVE loved me, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by the word ‘love,’ he re-
plied.
‘Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved
me. Have you, do you think?’
‘No,’ he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthful-
ness and obstinacy.
‘And you never WILL love me,’ she said finally, ‘will
you?’
There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Then,’ she replied, ‘what have you against me!’
He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. ‘If

658 Women in Love