“Answer me! Don’t you think you ever could?”
Her face was full of dumb, sullen misery; she muttered:
“There’s something you don’t understand—something you don’t know about.”
“That’s not what I asked you. Answer me.”
“No,” she muttered sullenly. “I can’t feel that way about you…. I never will.” She turned with a miserable look in her face and began to walk again. The ring of ice kept hardening round his heart all the time; he caught up with her again, and again stopped her.
“Listen, Ann. You’ve got to tell me why. I’ve got to know.”—She shook her head miserably and turned away, but he caught her, and pulled her back, saying in a sharper, more peremptory tone:
“No, now—I’ve got to know. Is it because—you just never could feel that way about a fellow like me—because you could never think about me in that way—?”
She didn’t answer for a moment; she just stood looking at him dumbly and miserably; and finally she shook her head in a movement of denial:
“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”
The ring of ice kept getting thicker all the time, it seemed he would not be able to speak the words, but in a moment he said:
“Well, then, is it—is it someone else?”
She made a sudden tormented movement of anguish and despair, and turning, tried to walk away. He seized her, and jerked her back to him, and said:
“Answer me, God-damn it! Is that the reason why?”
He waited a long moment before the answer came, and then she muttered it out so low he could scarcely hear it.
“Yes,” she said, and wrenched her arm free. “Let me go.”
He caught her again, and pulled her back. The ring of ice seemed to have frozen solid, and in that cold block he could feel his heart throbbing like a trip-hammer.
“Who is it?” he said.
She did not answer, and he shook her roughly. “You answer me…. Is it someone you knew back home—?”
“Let me go,” she muttered. “I won’t tell you.”
“By God, you will,” he said thickly, and held her. “Who is it? Is it someone you met back home, or not?”
