it is an emotion you feel or you don’t feel, according to circumstance.’

‘Then why do you care about people at all?’ she asked, ‘if you don’t believe in love? Why do you bother about humanity?’

‘Why do I? Because I can’t get away from it.’

‘Because you love it,’ she persisted.

It irritated him.

‘If I do love it,’ he said, ‘it is my disease.’

‘But it is a disease you don’t want to be cured of,’ she said, with some cold sneering.

He was silent now, feeling she wanted to insult him.