‘What!’ She withdrew her hand instantly. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Sorry! I didn’t mean about us, you know, though we come into it. I’d been thinking and had just made a discovery.’
She regarded him indulgently. ‘You’d better get it off your chest, hadn’t you? Go on. I’m listening.’
‘We all get on a romantic switchback—up and down, up and down all the time.’ He was talking to himself rather than to her. ‘First we can know everything and it’s wonderful, then we can know nothing and it’s all rotten. Just as if there wasn’t a way in between! There always is, all the time, and we’re simply too damned proud and lazy and egoistical to find it and go down it. The thing we won’t bother with is just plain common sense. It frightens us. It makes us seem less important. Why, after all, Gladys, I know you——’
‘Do you though?’ she interrupted. ‘That’s what I’ve just been wondering about. You don’t really, do you? I don’t really know you, though I seem to better than anybody. That’s funny, isn’t it?’ She was very eager, excited.
‘Yes, I do,’ he replied sturdily. ‘I don’t know all about you, but I feel I know a devil of a lot. If I’ve made it up, I’ve made it up, and that’s that. But I can go on learning. There’s a truth to come out.’ He was excited himself now and sat up as if to proclaim his discovery to the world. He felt as if he had turned a corner. ‘That’s what we really don’t want to believe, that there’s a truth to come out. We don’t want to sit tight, wait, and learn anything. We pretend we’re above sensible compromise, when all the time we’re below it. All this disillusion’s egoistical bunkum.’
‘I dare say it is, though I don’t know what you mean. I never knew anybody who went on at such a rate. And who are you talking about, with your “we pretend” this and “we do” that?’ She wasn’t eager now, but amused and worshipping, as if he had just done something rather clever with a box of bricks. ‘Now, who d’you mean?’
‘Oh—er—people like me, I suppose, gloomy young asses,’ he told her. ‘I speak,’ he added, with mock pompousness, ‘for my own generation, though whether you are a member of that generation or not, my dear Gladys, I am not prepared to say.’
‘You’re prepared to say anything, if you ask me.’ She leaned forward. ‘And you’re a funny boy and I don’t know why I’m bothering myself about you.’ Her cheek was lightly brushed across his and a hand passed over his head.
‘That was benediction,’ he said. ‘Now we must go. We’ll begin again—never to end—in the house. Ready?’ He rose from the seat and discovered that his feet were very cold and his legs were cramped.