"You'll come. And you know what the end of that will be."
"You think no other end is possible between a man and a woman?"
"If I do, it's men who have made me think it."
"No, not you. I don't say your plan wouldn't work with some other woman. I say it's impossible between you--and me."
"Because you won't believe that I might behave differently from some other men?"
"You _are_ different. And I mean to keep you so."
"There's only one way," she said. "We must never see each other again. We mustn't even _think_. I shall go away, and you're not to come after me."
"You shan't go," he said. "I'll go. You must stay here until we can think of something."
She closed her eyes and drew a hard sigh, as if exhausted with the discussion.
"Robert, dear, would you mind not talking any more to me? I'm very tired."
"If I leave you will you go to bed and rest?"
"No--don't say it!" she cried. "Don't speak to me!"
She drew back and put her hands behind her as a sign that he was not to touch her.
He stood for a moment looking at her. And as he looked at her he was afraid, even as she was. He said to himself that in that moment she was wise and had done well. For his heart hardly knew its pity from its passion, and its passion from its fear.
And she, seeing that she stood between him and the door, turned aside and made his way clear for him.
She stared at her own face in the glass without seeing it. Her brain was filled with the loud, hurried ticking of the clock. It sounded somehow as if it were out of gear. She felt herself swaying slightly as she stood.
She was not going to faint bodily. It seemed to her rather that the immaterial bonds, the unseen, subtle, intimate connections were letting go their hold. Her soul was the heart of the danger. It was there that the travelling powers of dissolution, accelerated, multiplying, had begun their work and would end it. Its moments were not measured by the ticking of the clock.
She had remained standing as Lucy had left her, with her back to the door he had gone out by. She was thus unaware that a servant of the hotel had come in, that he had delivered some message and was waiting for her answer.
She started as the man spoke to her again. With a great effort her brain grasped and repeated what he had said.