He didn’t care. She was a sexual hand grenade with the pin pulled out, but he could never manage to resist her. Whatever this said about him didn’t matter.

She’s no match for him when it comes to a battle of words.

If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.

He left her. She was dissatisfied with him. He had preferred to incur her anger rather than cause her pain. He had kept all the pain for himself.

She had tried to love him.

"You weren't able to talk sense into him?"
Well, we kind of tried to kill each other in a duel to the death."
I see. You tried the diplomatic approach."

She looked at him helplessly. After all, it was no use. There was this money-business standing in the way - these meaningless scruples which she had never understood but which she had accepted merely because they were his. She felt all the impotence, the resentment of a woman who sees an abstract idea triumphing over common sense.

She was trying to work up the proper tone of righteous rage and it just wouldn’t come. It would start, and then she would look at Lawrence and see a pathetic, tired man who already knew how badly he had fucked up and was doing what he could, which was next to nothing, to put things right.

He didn’t care what she thought, and, in not caring, he felt as if a curse were lifted from his back.

he didn't really care. he was tired

Nature did not seem cruel to him then, nor kind, nor dangerous, nor wise. But she was not interested, completely not interested.

It simply did not occur to her that she had hurt him as deeply as she had, because she still thought of herself as an ordinary woman, and him as an extraordinary man.

Maybe if she had known some other way to try, she might have made his face different. But what the other way could be, she had no idea.

At the time he had closed in upon himself, denying her a place of entry. She was tenacious, aggressive as a lover, had tried to prise the pieces of him apart. Only when she failed had she finally let go, by then months had passed.