I wanted to ask you--" he
paused a moment, and then--"what have you really made of your life?" he
said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but
she said nothing, and he went on: "I can't understand, I can't penetrate
you! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?" Still she said
nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to
ease. "I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it.
That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and
you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed.
You conceal everything; I haven't really come near you."

"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.

"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done
well?"

"You ask a great deal."

"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I
shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business."
He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a
considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that
it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she
would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a
lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. "You're perfectly
inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I
tell you I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I
don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away
with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If
you should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to
leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as
contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the
truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing.
That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I
wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't
thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away.
But if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single
moment, is there? If you're really hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say
will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. I
thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't
say it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last
time--le