'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 replied.
'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 truthfulness 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 only I could
kill her,' his heart was whispering repeatedly. 'If only I could kill
her--I should be free.'
It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot.
'Why do you torture me?' he said.
She flung her arms round his neck.
'Ah, I don't want to torture you,' she said pityingly, as if she were
comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins go cold, he was
insensible.
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