He said it simply, without the defense that had been there for most of the evening.
He said: I didn’t think about what I was doing.
She said: I know.
He said: I thought about myself. What I wanted.
She said: yes.
He said: and not about you.
She said: Gabriel, you don’t know me very well.
He said: no. I don’t.
She said: you might know me better if you had spent the last three weeks paying attention.
She said it gently.
She said it in the way of a woman who has been gentle her entire life and who is gentle now not because she is afraid but because she has chosen gentleness as her way of being in the world.
He said: I know.
