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Page 558
He did not answer that, except for smiling a little to show he had heard. "What is it you cannot bear?" he asked.
Joanna had hoped he would forget, but she knew it was better to speak the truth than to let him depart wondering. "I thought you wereI do not know how to say itserving me to give my body ease although you hated it and hated me, as you have all these months past."
"Hated? You?" There was horror in his voice. "You are my life. You are the breath of my body. God knows, this last year I would have thrown myself on the first sword shown to me if it was not for you."
"That may be true, but then you hated me for binding you to life."
"Not younever. I foresaw only endless years of fear and pain and, in the endI saw what happened to the women, even gentlewomen. I dared not speak of it, comforting myself that when I saw we were overmatched I would kill you myself. I tried so hard to hide it from you that I did not see I hurt you worse by my silence. Beloved, forgive me."
"One does not forgive a person one loves because there is nono anger. Tell me only this. If what you say is true, why were you soso indifferent when we coupled?"
"Indifferent!" He laughed awkwardly and flushed. "Oh, God! That was true idiocy. I knew it, and yet I could not control it. I did not wish you to bring a child into this world. I saw such horrors before us, if we lived at allflight, prison, starvationand the babe to suffer and fear for. I would have left your bed entirely, butbut, Joanna, I was not indifferent."
Joanna could not help laughing. Now that he had said it, she saw it clearly enough. She had misread him. It was only Geoffrey, always overanxious, always feeling that he must be the one to lift the world on his shoulders. She felt light as a feather. If Geoffrey had not been holding her, she thought, she might float right off the bed.
"Will you do something for me?" she asked.
"Anything, I will do anything." Then an expression of extreme anxiety came over his face. "I mean"

 
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