He drew his hand away. "Nothing, Brida."
"Just now—when you first came—what did you mean by saying: 'All right then—it's no good then.' What did you mean by that, Phil?"
His face, while she waited his reply, was working as though it mirrored clumsy working of his brain. His words, when he found speech, were blurred and spasmodic, as though his brain that threw them up were a machine gone askew and leaking under intense internal stress, where it should have delivered in an amiable flow. "Why, I meant that it's no good," he said, "no good looking for what I can't find. I don't know what it is, even. Brida, I don't even know what it is that I want. Peace—rest—happiness—getting back to what I used to be. I don't know. I can't explain. I can't even explain to myself—"
"Why, old boy?"
"I can do it at night. Sometimes I can get near it at night. Sometimes I lie awake at night and call myself all the vile, vile names I can think of. Go through the alphabet and find a name for what I am with every letter. But at the back of it—at the back of it there's still—still a reservation, still an excuse for myself. I want to tell some one. I want to find some one to tell it all to—to say 'I'm This and That and This and That, and Oh! for God Almighty's sake help me—help me—'"
She knew his moods, and of their depth more at this interview than ever before, and yet still in no wise fathomed them. He stopped, twisted in mind and in face with his efforts, and she (his moods unplumbed) laughed, thinking to rally him, and said: "Why, no, it's no good calling yourself names to me, Phil."
He broke out more savagely than he had yet spoken, and he had been violent enough:
"That's what I'm telling you. No good—no good! You'd laugh. You're laughing now. Everybody laughs. I'm lucky!—so successful!—so happy!—no cares!—no ties!—no troubles! Other people have bad times!—others are ill!—breakdowns and God knows what, and responsibilities, and burdens, and misfortunes! but me!—I've all the luck—I've everything!—"
When she could stop him, she said: "I don't laugh at you, Phil. That's not fair."
"You always do. I thought I'd come to you to-day to see. I always come to you hoping. But I always go away knowing I'm a fool to have troubled. Well, I won't come again. I always say that to myself. Now I've said it to you. Now it's fixed. I won't come back again. It's done—it's over!"