‘Because I said I was going to be married tomorrow, and he bullied me.’
‘Why did he bully you?’
Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once more, the tears came up.
‘Because I said he didn’t care — and he doesn’t, it’s only his domineeringness that’s hurt — ’ she said, her mouth pulled awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost smiled, it seemed so childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a mortal conflict, a deep wound.
‘It isn’t quite true,’ he said. ‘And even so, you shouldn’t SAY it.’
‘It IS true — it IS true,’ she wept, ‘and I won’t