What does Joe think of me lately

"What does Joe think of me lately?"
"I don't know. I don't think he hates you any more. Probably he just doesn't care to deal with you. He thinks your part in it was probably characteristic of you."
"Which me, for heaven's sake?" I laughed. "How about you?"
"I still despise you, I think," Rennie said unemotionally.
"Clear through?"
"As far as I can see."
This thrilled me from head to foot. I had been not interested in Rennie this night until she said this, but now I was acutely interested in her.
"Has this been just since we slept together?"
"I don't know how much of it is retroactive, Jake; right now I think I've disliked you ever since I've known you, but I guess that's not so. I've had some kind of feeling about you at least since we started the riding lessons, and as far as I can see now it was a kind of dislike. Abhorrence, I guess, is a better word. I don't believe in anything like premonitions, but I swear I've wished ever since August that we'd never met you, even though I couldn't have said why."
I felt way high on a mountaintop, thinking widely and uncloudedly; hundred-eyed Argus was not more synoptic.
"I'll bet I know one point of view you and Joe didn't try, Rennie."
"We tried them all," she said.
I felt like the end of an Ellery Queen novel.
"Not this one. And by the Law of Parsimony it's good, because it accounts for the most facts by the fewest assumptions. It's simple as hell: we didn't just copulate; we made love. What you've felt all along and couldn't admit to yourself was that you love me."
"That's right," Rennie breathed, looking at me tautly.
"It could be. I'm not being vain. At least I'm notjust being vain."
"That's not what I meant," Rennie said, and she had some difficulty saying it. "I meant -- it's not right that I've never admitted it to myself."
Now her eyes showed real abhorrence, but it was not clear in them what or whom she abhorred. I grew very excited.
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"That's one of the things that destroys me," Rennie said. "The idea that I might have been in love with you all the time occurred to me along with all the rest -- along with the idea that I despise you and the idea that I couldn't really feel anything about you because you don't exist. You know what I mean. I don't know which is true."
"I suppose they're all true, Rennie," I suggested. "While we're at it, did you ever consider that maybe Joe's the one who doesn't exist?"
"No." She whipped her head slowly. "I don't know."
"I don't think you have to be afraid of the idea that you feel some kind of love for me. Certainly it doesn't imply anything one way or the other about your feeling for Joe, unless you want to be romantic about it. In fact, I don't see where it implies anything, except that the whole affair is less mysterious than we'd supposed, and maybe less sordid."
But Rennie clearly accepted none of this.
"Jake, I can't make love to you tonight."
"All right. I'll take you home."
In the car I kissed her gently. "I think this is great. It's funny as the devil."
"That's about right."