her fear that she would hurt me – which could only mean, ‘I will harm you with my lies, with my inconsistencies, with my secret actions, with my feigned emotions and sensations,’ since she could never hurt me by truly loving me; the distressing scene of the matches; how at the beginning she had avoided even my kisses, and how she had given herself physically only when faced with the extreme of confessing her aversion or, in the best of cases, a motherly or sisterly affection
