18/41 It was as if she hoped by convincing him to persuade her own rebellious heart of the truth she proclaimed. She had been lucid enough even for the crystalline lucidity of his thought. I made a mistake," he said quietly, and after the exultant note of a few moments ago there was a dull level of flatness in his voice. There don't seem to be anything else that I can say or do, but--but it wouldn't have happened if I had understood--" He paused, looked at her closely for a minute, and then added stubbornly, with an echo of the old confidence in his tone: "I still don't believe it." "It is true, nevertheless." She was trembling with indignation, and this indignation, in spite of her natural fairness, was not directed against herself, against her own blindness and folly. |