Explore "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As Hortense well knew Clyde was pressing more and more hungrily toward that ultimate condescension on her part, which, though she would never have admitted it to him, was the privilege of two others. They were never together any more without his insisting upon the real depth of her regard for him. Why was it, if she cared for him the least bit, that she refused to do this, that or the other--would not let him kiss her as much as he wished, would not let him hold her in his arms as much as he would like. She was always keeping dates with other fellows and breaking them or refusing to make them with him. What was her exact relationship toward these others? Did she really care more for them than she did for him? In fact, they were never together anywhere but what this problem of union was uppermost--and but thinly veiled.
And she liked to think that he was suffering from repressed desire for her all of the time that she tortured him, and that the power to allay his suffering lay wholly in her--a sadistic trait which had for its soil Clyde's own masochistic yearning for her.