"Of course," he says quietly, leaning down to him, "after all, I'm the only one you're looking at right now. The problem is that I'd be flogging a half-dead horse. If I'm so brutal with you, what does that do to me - you haven't thought about that, have you? You know very well that it's hard to suppress things once you've let them surface. And all this just to catch you with someone else in the end?"