She would like to tell him, cruel and hard, that she was. It would be easier -- if so much more deadly and dangerous and untrue. She does not want to look to her own folly.

Trying to believe him, to believe in her future, trying and thinking she had been finding reasons to think that underneath that dark exterior there was anything but a monster.

More than her pride had been stripped in letting herself believe.

"Is it his fault you are laying out here nearly drowning yourself, too?"