"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me somewhere."
"Where?"
"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me, Charlotte, on my farm?"
"Yes."
"I mean--live with me without that."
"Yes; without that."
"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate, exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even thinking of you ...
"... And all that would go. Everything would go....
"... But our way--nothing could end it."
"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really cared about."
"Oh that--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what difference would it make?"
"You mean you'd come back?"
"I mean I shouldn't have left you."
"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."
"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."
"Why shouldn't it?"
"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it makes me loathe her."
"It wouldn't, if you wanted her."
"That would be worse. I should hate her then if she made me go to her."
"You don't know."
"Oh, don't I!"
"You can't, if you feel like that about it."
"You say you feel like that about it yourself."
"That's because I've been through it."
"Do you suppose," he said, "I haven't?"