"If only you could love me a little, little bit ?" "But I do," said Paul hoarsely.
She shook her head and sobbed afresh, and they stood in close embrace at the end of the room by the door, regardless of the presence of the old man who sat, his back to them, smoking his pipe and looking, with his birdlike crook of the neck, meditatively into the fire.

"No, no," said Jane, at last.

"It's silly of me.

Forgive me.

We mustn't talk of such things.