“Oh, to hell with my nature!”
“Now my nature I suppose is light. . . .”
“Happy Wilf!” said Stanny.
Happy Wilf! Wilfred snatched at the phrase. It supplied the identity he was in search of. The moment it was spoken he recognized its truth, though up to that time he had regarded himself as among the unhappiest of mortals. This would necessitate the recasting of his whole scheme. It started a dozen rabbits in his mind. There was evidently an unhappiness to which he was a stranger. Was it worse not to be able to explain one’s unhappiness? And so on. These rabbits must be run down one by one later. Happy Wilf! Stanny had given him a character!
“What’s the matter?” whispered Stanny, alarmed by his silence.
“Nothing. What you said made me think. . . .”
Stanny snorted.
Wilfred, recollecting that he had Stanny to console, pulled himself together. “Things are buried way down in you,” he said. He heard the heavy tone in his own voice, and was dissatisfied with it. “That’s why it hurts when they struggle up. . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake! I wish you wouldn’t always be trying to explain me to myself!” interrupted Stanny. “It’s a most irritating way that you have. . . . Things are not so easy explained. I’m like . . . I’m like a man standing with his back to the shore, and the waves breaking over his head!”
“I’m sorry,” whispered Wilfred. “I’ve got to be trying to explain things. I can’t rest with them. But you mustn’t mind what I say. I’m only . . . I’m only . . . what is the word? I’m only speculating. I don’t insist on anything.”