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 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!
