People said that you had to be yourself, and be strong and independent to be in love. They said that meekness and submission would only drive men away, that confidence was attractive. But I had done it, had worn him down with weakness. He did not love me – couldn’t, for what Me was there to love? What Me had he ever known? – but he had become attached to me, dependent on me. I had carefully created a circumstance in which a kind of love could be bred in him, like a scientist manipulating lab conditions. I had exhausted his reserves, eroded his natural resistance, and now I was finished.
