Lewis sighed. Not only Clare herself, but Clare even heard about, invariably overwhelmed Lewis with the greatest ennui—or in happier moments made him swearing, cursing mad. Just now it was ennui. But he tried to conceal his weariness for Dick’s sake. Dick was not only Cynthia’s husband’s cousin. He was Lewis’ friend of many years. He had no brains—certainly—but artistic functioning in his brainpan somewhere took the place of brains, and most whiles made him companionable enough. So now, after sighing, Lewis said, “Yes, I understand perfectly. But Clare is obviously right: clearsighted, as you yourself must see. The friendship is destructive to you while it leaves her unhurt. You ought to snap out of it. It’s no joke, I know, being head over heels in love with a married woman. But it does happen. And it’s never any good sticking around and trying to get nourishment on half a loaf. A clean break is the only self-respecting possibility. Sorry—but you asked for it, old-timer.”
A silence, charged with emotion (another of Dick’s substitutes for brain) moving toward articulation followed. Then he blurted, “I can’t do it, Lewis. One can’t choose to starve. Half a loaf is better than none—even if it isn’t filling!”
Lewis’ response to that was unequivocal. “It is not better. It’s just a sweet little hell. Clare gave you the right dope. Take it from her, if you won’t from me. If you want to salvage your future, stay a long way away from Green Doors, and snap out of it.”
“You talk as if you knew....” Dick was looking at his friend now with as much curiosity as surprise. “But Clare has stopped saying anything about my going. She put it up to me to decide for myself, anyway. She wasn’t dogmatic and opinionated. Not for a minute! I decided to stay. It’s not that I want your opinion on. I believe, with Clare, in the individual’s right to decide on the happiness or the misery he will take for himself.... So I’m staying,—but, thanks to Clare, with my eyes open. It hasn’t been easy. It is just about what you say—a sweet little hell.”
“Well, of course.... So that’s that. Shall we get going?” Lewis picked up his stick and crushed a half-smoked cigarette under his heel.
“No, wait a minute. See here, Lewis, I want to talk to you. I can’t talk, walking. It was Clare, really, who sent me off down here with you. And I haven’t come to the point of what she wanted me to tell you yet. That was only preliminary. Clare has a scheme.—She thought you’d agree that it was, perhaps, rather a good one.”
Lewis groaned but selected another cigarette. Another “scheme”—“good.” Clare was indomitable. He leaned back again, his elbows on the rock. They might as well have the rest of it now, he supposed, so long as they were messing about in thick fog, anyway. A little more or less confusion from poor Dick’s mindlessness—what did it matter! But the next minute Lewis was galvanized into feeling that it mattered enormously. For Dick had said, “I didn’t go away, you see. And I’m not going to. I couldn’t leave Clare, to save my life. Our friendship (Clare’s and mine) has become of such importance to us both—yes, Clare too—that now we see that nothing in this world could have the power to part us. Least of all, mere physical separation. We must stay—passionate friends. We belong to each other. I don’t think you can imagine, Lewis, what such friendship can be—or what trying to stamp it out of one’s life would do to one. It would be infinitely easier to stamp out a sexual relationship than such a one as Clare’s and mine.... Well, this is her scheme. She thinks it will make it possible for our friendship to go on being beautiful, even grow more beautiful, more dynamic. She wants me to marry Petra. That will make it safer for us both, do you see? What’s the matter?”
The obvious matter was that Lewis had torn his coat sleeve, a jagged rent, somehow on the rock.
“Mrs. Langley will mend it for you. She can do a magnificent mend. But how’d you manage it? You were just leaning—”
“Yes, just leaning, and hearing the ravings of a blasted idiot. What are you trying to do? Be funny, I suppose! But I don’t care for that kind of funniness. You can leave Petra out of it.”