“Yes. If she really is there, all the time.”
“How d’you mean, _there?_”
“Here—in this room. I tell you I can’t get over that feeling that she’s
here.”
“Oh, feel, feel,” he said; “but don’t talk to me about it!”
And he left the room, flinging himself out in anger. And instantly her
flame went out.
I thought, “How he must have hurt her!” It was the old thing over again:
I trying to break him down, to make him show her; he beating us both
off, punishing us both. You see, I knew now what she had come back for:
she had come back to find out whether he loved her. With a longing
unquenched by death, she had come back for certainty. And now, as
always, my clumsy interference had only made him more hard, more
obstinate. I thought, “If only he could see her! But as long as he beats
her off he never will.”