no feeling; she had exhausted all the emotions of her suffering.
And her knowledge of his cruelty was absolute. To McClane's assertion of
the fact she had no response beyond that toneless acquiescence.

"Taking you into that shed--"

He had roused her.

"How on earth did you know that? I've never told a single soul."

"It was known in the hospital. One of the carpenters saw the whole thing.
He told one of our orderlies who told my chauffeur Gurney who told me."

"It doesn't matter what he did to _me_. I can't get over his not caring
for the wounded."

"He was jealous of them, because you cared for them."

"Oh no. He'd left off caring for me by then."

"_Had_ he?" He gave a little soft, wise laugh. "What makes you think so?"

"That. His cruelty."

"Love can be very cruel."

"Not as cruel as that," she said.

"Yes. As cruel as that.... Remember, it was at the bottom of the whole
business. Of his dreams. In a sense, the real John Conway was the man
who dreamed."

"If you're right he was the man who was cruel, too. And it's his
cruelty I hate."

"Don't hate it. Don't hate it. I want you to understand his cruelty. It
wasn't just savagery. It was something subtler. A supreme effort to get
power. Remember, he couldn't help it. He _had_ to right himself.
Supposing his funk extinguished something in him that could only be
revived through cruelty? You'll say he could help betraying you--"

"To you, too?"

"To me, too. When you lost faith in him you cut off his main source of
power. You had to be discredited so that it shouldn't count. You mustn't
imagine that he did anything on purpose. He was driven. It sounds
horrible, but I want you to see it was just his way of saving his soul,
the only way open to him. You mustn't think of it as a bad way. Or a good
way. It wasn't even _his_ way. It was the way of something bigger than he
was, bigger than anything he could ever be. Bigger than badness or
goodness."

"Did 'it' do cowardly things to 'save' itself?"

"No. If Conway could have played the man 'it' would have been satisfied.
It was always urging him." ... "Try," he said, and she knew that now at
any rate he was sincere; he really wanted to help her; he was giving her
his best. His voice was very quiet now, his excited gestures had ceased.
"Try and think of it as something more real, more important and necessary
than he was; or you and I. Something that is always struggling to be, to
go on being. Something t