He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant.
“If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,” he continued, “I shall give up my work altogether. It has become dead to me. I don’t believe in the humanity I pretend to be part of, I don’t care a straw for the social ideals I live by, I hate the dying organic form of social mankind—so it can’t be anything but trumpery, to work at education. I shall drop it as soon as I am clear enough—tomorrow perhaps—and be by myself.”
“Have you enough to live on?” asked Ursula.
“Yes—I’ve about four hundred a year. That makes it easy for me.”
There was a pause.
“And what about Hermione?” asked Ursula.
“That’s over, finally—a pure failure, and never could have been anything else.”
“But you still know each other?”
“We could hardly pretend to be strangers, could we?”
There was a stubborn pause.