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282 "You're mad!"

"Why?"

"To suggest such a thing," she said, with a scornful laugh. "You're mad. You think that I . . ."

"Want to be unhappy all your life?"

"That I should consent to run away with you. I love my husband . . . and my children . . . and you imagine . . ."

"Yes," he said, "it was mad of me to suggest it. You love your husband, not me. You never allow me anything, not anything."

"Nothing . . . at all?" she asked, scornfully.

"Nothing . . . that counts," he retorted, hoarsely, roughly.

She shrugged her shoulders:

"You men always want . . . that. Our happiness does not always consist . . . of that."

"No, but . . . if you loved me . . . entirely . . ."

"Johan!" she cried.

They crossed the bridge and entered the Woods.

"If you ever dare speak to me like that again. . . ."

"Very well, I won't."

"But you're always doing it. . . . We'd better not see each other at all."

"Not see each other?"

"No."

"I won't have that," he said. "I won't have that either."

"And if I insist?"

"Even so."

"You don't make me any happier by talking like that; you make me even unhappier than I am."

"Oh, Tilly, I can't bear to see you unhappy! . . . What are we to do, what are we to do?"

"I don't know," she said, in a dead voice.