“I know you can’t help it,” she replied.
“I love you an awful lot — then there is something short.”
“Where?” she answered, looking at him.
“Oh, in me! It is I who ought to be ashamed — like a spiritual cripple. And I am ashamed. It is misery. Why is it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Miriam.
“And I don’t know,” he repeated. “Don’t you think we have been too fierce in our what they call purity? Don’t you think that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of dirtiness?”