"Because you love me!" she echoed, curtly. "Because I'm good enough . . . for that!"
Her eyes flashed.
"Tilly!" he implored.
It was as though a sudden terror blinded him, as though a spectre of guilt suddenly loomed up out of all the black self-insufficiency of the last few years, his years of married life.
"Because I'm good enough . . . to bear you children. Because you want to have children by me, healthy children, children different from your family, your mother's family."
"Tilly!"
"Addie!" she entreated. "Love me! Love me!"
"I do love you, Tilly!" he cried, in despair.
"Love me altogether!"
"I do love you altogether!" he lied, in anguish for her sake.
"No, you love me . . . half!"
"That's not so!"
"Yes, it is, you know it is! . . . I want to be loved by you altogether and not only . . ."
"Hush, Tilly," he entreated, in dismay. "Tilly, don't let us spoil our happiness!"
"Our happiness!" she laughed, scornfully.
"Aren't we happy then?"
And he tried to force her to say yes, but she was suffering too much and exclaimed:
"No, I am not happy! When I embrace you . . ." she clutched her fingers. "When I have embraced you," she went on, "it's over, it's over, it's over at once; I feel that you are far away from me again; that you don't love me."
"I do love you, I do love you!"
"Then talk to me."
"I do."
