[ How can he not understand. How many ways can she say it. ]

Because when I see you together I think you would seek him. I think 'he would go to Bastien with his heart in his hands.' And then I think 'he would not come so to me. He would not ask me, nervously, if I loved him.'

You looked at me once as if I were a precious thing and you could not believe your fortune. Now you look so at him, and... it goes hard.

[ She wants to curl into a ball again, because she can feel the cold fingers of her fear reaching for her again, wanting to grip again, make her do something else she will hate when it is done. She tries to breathe again, instead. ]

Everything else was awful. But for a little while I dreamed that you held me as if there were nothing else in the world that mattered, and I was solace rather than burden and I—

I weep to have woken from that part.