Why should I monopolise you when I'm not--You see, I'm deficient in something with regard to you--" He was telling her he did not love her, and so ought to leave her a chance with another man.

How foolish and blind and shamefully clumsy he was! What were other men to her! What were men to her at all! But he, ah! she loved his soul.

Was HE deficient in something?
Perhaps he was.
"But I don't understand," she said huskily.

"Yesterday--" The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the twilight faded.
And she bowed under her suffering.
"I know," he cried, "you never will! You'll never believe that I can't--can't physically, any more than I can fly up like a skylark--" "What ?" she murmured.

Now she dreaded.
"Love you." He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her suffer.