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208 "No, talk to me as you talk to Mary."

"But, Tilly, I talk to her . . . to calm her."

"That's a lie!"

"Tilly!"

"It's a lie! . . . You talk to her . . . you talk to her because you're in love with her!"

"Tilly, stop that!"

"Not as you are with me . . . but differently. . . ."

Suddenly he grasped her wrist. She knew his sudden bursts of anger. They were very rare; but she knew them. And, because he was dazzled by the sudden light that shone from her, because from all the gloom of his self-insufficiency a consciousness of guilt came looming up to frighten him:

"And now, silence!" he cried, shaking her arm. "Silence! I command it!"

He no longer knew things. Life whirled dizzily before him, deep as a black abyss.

He stood in front of her on the lonely road; and it was as though his grey eyes flashed lightning, shooting blue spark after blue spark of rage and pain. His whole face quivered, his body quivered, his voice quivered with rage and pain. She felt a furious resistance rise within her. . . together with black despair. She felt an impulse to rush into his arms, to sob out her sorrow on his heart. But she did not want his caresses: she wanted the thing that escaped her. It was escaping her now; and, when she said it, when she said it straight out, he commanded her to be silent, not to say it. Wasn't it his fault, wasn't it his fault? Wasn't she right?

She released her hand:

"You don't love me," she said, curtly.

"No. When you speak to me like that, I don't. I'm not in love with Marietje. I'm sorry for her."