"Not very likely; no."
The years seemed mapped out before him and he found it difficult to maintain his pose of complacent satisfaction, so that one evening, when he felt more than ordinarily depressed, and when the need of sympathy became irresistible, he found himself telling April the story of his trouble.
She listened to him quietly, sitting huddled up in the window-seat, her knees drawn up towards her, her hands clasped beneath them. She said nothing for a while after he had finished.
"Well," he said at last, "that's the story. You know all about it now."
She looked up at him. There was in her eyes neither annoyance nor repulsion nor contempt, but only interest and sympathy.
"Why did you do it, Roland?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. And because this happened to be the real reason, and because he felt it to be inadequate, he searched his memory for some more plausible account.
"I don't know," he said. "It seemed to happen this way. Things were awfully dull at school, and then, during the Christmas holidays, we had that row. If it hadn't been for that I think I should have chucked it up altogether. But you didn't seem to care for me; it didn't seem to matter much either way; and—well one drifts into these things."
There was another pause.