[Good - now it's both of them being stubbornly analytical together. This is what Beckett knows, and he will stick to it come hell or high snow, because that is the only way for survival to have meaning. Unlife has taught him that lesson mightily well, and it's a handy one.]

But is it that they would not help us further, or is it that they cannot? Cruelty for its own sake - [He pauses here, because he knows fantastically well just how many uses torture has. But then it's always that, uses.]

We assume that someone is tormenting us. We could be wrong. Someone could be helping us to the little extent they're able to do so.

[This could simply be the world, he keeps thinking.]