‘Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less,’ she said, in a half contemptuous, half coaxing tone.

The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his mind, great waves of darkness plunging across his mind. It seemed to him he was degraded at the very quick, made of no account.

‘You mean you don’t want me?’ he said.

‘You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so little fineness. You are so crude. You break me — you only waste me — it is horrible to me.’

‘Horrible to you?’ he repeated.

‘Yes. Don’t you think I might have a room to myself, now Ursula has gone? You can say you want a dressing room.’