Menacingly she tugged at the tuft of hair she held twined round her fingers. It angered her that he should escape her, that he should not give himself up completely to her. And this resentful feeling that he did not love her enough produced in her a complementary conviction that she loved him too much. Her anger combined with her physical gratitude to make her feel, for the moment, peculiarly passionate. She found herself all at once playing the part of the _grande amoureuse_, the impassioned de Lespinasse, playing it spontaneously and without the least difficulty. “I could hate you,” she said resentfully, “for making me love you so much.” “And what about me?” said Calamy, thinking of his freedom. “Haven’t I a right to hate too?” “No. Because you don’t love so much.” “But that’s not the question,” said Calamy, neglecting to record his protest against this damning impeachment. “One doesn’t resent love for its own sake, but for the sake of what it interferes with.” “Oh, I see,” said Mary bitterly. She was too deeply wounded even to desire to pull his hair. She turned her back on him. “I’m sorry I should have got in the way of your important occupations,” she said in her most sarcastic voice. “Such as thinking about your hand.” She laughed derisively. There was a long silence. Calamy made no attempt to break it; he was piqued by this derisive treatment of a subject which, for him, was serious, was in some sort sacred. It was Mary who first spoke. “Will you tell me, then, what you were thinking?” she asked submissively, turning back towards him. When one loves, one swallows one’s pride and surrenders. “Will you tell me?” she repeated, leaning over him. She took one of his hands and began to kiss it, then suddenly bit one of his fingers so hard that Calamy cried out in pain. “Why do you make me so unhappy?” she asked between clenched teeth. She saw herself, as she spoke the words, lying face downward on her bed, desperately sobbing. It needs a great spirit to be greatly unhappy. “Make you unhappy?” echoed Calamy in a voice of irritation; he was still smarting with the pain of that bite. “But I don’t. I make you uncommonly happy.” “You make me miserable,” she answered. “Well, in that case,” said Calamy, “I’d better go away and leave you in peace.” He slipped his arm from under her shoulders, as though he were really preparing to go. But Mary enfolded him in her arms. “No, no,” she implored. “Don’t go. You mustn’t be cross with me. I’m sorry. I behaved abominably. Tell me, please, what you were thinking about your hand. I really am interested. Really, really.” She spoke eagerly, childishly, like the little girl at the Royal Institution lecture. Calamy couldn’t help laughing. “You’ve succeeded in rather damping my enthusiasm for that subject,” he said. “I’d find it difficult to begin now, in cold blood.” “Please, please,” Mary insisted. Wronged, it was she who asked pardon, she who cajoled. When one loves....