Page 456 - sons-and-lovers

when we were together!’ he pleaded.
‘Never!’ she cried; ‘never! It has always been you fight-
ing 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 had 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 ap-
peared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played
with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her condem-
nation 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 na-
tures. 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 giv-