"No—and yet I want to be kind to her. Therefore what's the matter?"
"Oh, if it's what's the matter with you you ask me, that extends the question. If you want to be kind to her, you get on with her, as we were saying, quite enough for my argument. And isn't the matter also, after all," I demanded, "that you simply feel she desires you to be kind?"
"She does that." And he looked at me as with the sense of drawing from me, for his relief, some greater help than I was as yet conscious of the courage to offer. "It is that she desires me. She likes it. And the extraordinary thing is that I like it."
"And why in the world shouldn't you?"
"Because she terrifies me. She has something to hide."
"But, my dear man," I asked with a gaiety singularly out of relation to the small secret thrill produced in me by these words—"my dear man, what woman who's worth anything hasn't?"
"Yes, but there are different ways. What she tries for is this false appearance of happiness."
I weighed it. "But isn't that the best thing?"
"It's terrible to have to keep it up."
"Ah, but if you don't for her? If it all comes on herself?"