“Well, what is it?”
“No, you must promise.”
“I’ll do it if I can.”
“But you CAN. It isn’t doing. It’s NOT doing.”
“Come, Cyril, out with it.”
“I don’t want you to come in and look at me after I’m asleep any more.”
“But, you silly boy, what difference can it make to you if you’re asleep?”
“I don’t want you to. It’s like as if I was a baby. You’ll have to stop doing it some day, and so you may as well stop now.”
It was thus that he meant to turn his back on his youth.
She smiled. She was incomprehensibly happy. She continued to smile.