he won’t have it — he rejects it. He won’t let me think, really, and he won’t let me FEEL — he hates feelings.’

There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only he would have made this demand of her? Her he DROVE into thought, drove inexorably into knowledge — and then execrated her for it.

‘He wants me to sink myself,’ Ursula resumed, ‘not to have any being of my own — ’

‘Then why doesn’t he marry an odalisk?’ said Hermione in her mild sing-song, ‘if it is that he wants.’ Her long face looked sardonic and amused.

‘Yes,’ said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing was, he did not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been his slave —