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 “Leave that,” he cried in pain and raised her head by force. Her eyes were wide open with desperation and anxiety. He let go her head again and moaned. The resemblance was so striking that he gulped with horror. “Be quiet, at least be quiet,” he said in a strangled voice.

She again pressed her face against him. “Let me I must tell you everything  I began when I was thir  thirteen ” He covered her mouth with his hands; she bit it and continued her terrible confession through his fingers. “Be quiet,” he cried, but the words tore themselves out of her, her teeth chattered, she trembled and went on. Somehow he managed to silence her. “Oh,” she moaned, “if you knew the things that people do! And every one, every one is so rough with me as if I was  not even an animal, not even a stone!”

“Stop,” he said, beside himself, and, not knowing what to do, smoothed her head with the trembling stumps of his fingers. Appeased, she sighed and became motionless; he could feel her hot breath and the beat of the artery in her neck.

She began to giggle quietly. “You thought that I was sleeping, there, in the car. I wasn’t asleep. I did it on purpose and expected you to behave  like the others. Because you knew the sort of thing I was and  you only became angry and held me as if I were a little girl  as if I were something sacred ” Although she was laughing, tears suddenly came into her eyes. “Suddenly—I don’t know why—I was more happy than I had ever been—and proud—and frightfully ashamed,