Violet stared absently at the sea.
“I understand what you mean,” she said, “but I think you are wrong. After all we are human; we can’t get over that; and I think the woman who can’t make an effort to forget, who goes on nursing her sorrow, is feebler than the one who can. Of course time helps both. Oh yes, of course I am right. I am very old-fashioned, you know. I don’t care about dissecting myself and analyzing my tendencies, and thinking about limitations and aspirations. It seems to me that if you are inexperienced as I am you may kill yourself, as it were, in your analysis, or blind yourself altogether by peering too closely.”
“Go on,” said Maud, “you are so healthy.”
Violet turned to her and lay down close beside her.
“Yes, I want to be healthy anyhow,” she said, “and that is the main point. I think the way people dissect their own morbid selves, and put themselves in three-volumed pickle-jars, so to speak, for their friends to look at, is simply indecent. If you have a decayed tooth you don’t show it to all your friends and say, ‘It is much worse since last week’; you go to the dentist and have it stopped.”
“You dear dentist,” said Maud, “I’m so glad I came to you!”
“To tell yourself that life is hard and complicated,” continued Violet, “is to make it so, because one always believes one’s self. To say that it is simple simplifies it. Of course some people like it complicated, and so I suppose they are right to tell themselves that it is. But to tell yourself that it is complicated, and then be sorry for it, is foolishness.”
“I hate complications,” said Maud. “I hate them as much as you hate that pug. But supposing you find simple things dull; at least, supposing after your complications you find the simple things which you liked before bore you? Complications change one, you know.”
“I don’t know,” remarked Violet. “Do you mean that you are bored with this place?”
“I mean nothing of the sort,” said Maud. “I was only speculating. And the bell for lunch went ten minutes ago.”