"No good at all, Kenneth. That's why it's so awful."
He said then, genuinely: "Is it very awful, Helen?"
"Yes. You don't know what it's like to feel that all the time one's happiness in the world is hanging by a thread. Kenneth, all the time I'm watching you I can see Clare written in your mind. I know you want her. I know she can give you heaps that I can't give you. I know that our marriage, was a tragic mistake. We're not suited to one another. We make each other frightfully, frightfully miserable. More miserable than there's any reason for, but still, that doesn't help. We're misfits, somehow, and though we try ever so hard we shall never be any better until we grow old and are too tired for love any more. Then we shall be too disinterested to worry. It was my fault, Kenneth—I oughtn't to have married you. Father wanted me to, because your people have a lot of money, but I only married you because I loved you, Kenneth. It was silly of me, Kenneth, but it's the truth!"
"Ah!" So the mystery was solved. He softened to her now that he heard her simple confession; he felt that he loved her, after all.
She went on, sadly: "I'm not going to stay with you, Kenneth. I'm not going to ruin your life. You won't be able to keep me. I'd rather you be happy and not have anything to do with me."
Then he began one of his persuasive speeches. The beginning of it was sincere, but as he used up all the genuine emotion that was in him, he drew more and more on his merely histrionic capacities. He pleaded, he argued, he implored. Once the awful thought came to him: Supposing I cried? Doubt as to his capacity to cry impressively decided him against the suggestion.... And once the more awful thought came to him: Supposing one of these times I do not succeed in patching things up? Supposing we do agree to separate? Do I really want to win all the time I am wrestling so hard for victory?
And at the finish, when he had succeeded once again, and when she was ready for all the passionate endearments that he was too tired to take pleasure in giving, he felt: This cannot last. It is killing me. It is killing her too. God help us both....
II
One day he realised that he was a failure. He had had some disciplinary trouble with the fifth form and had woefully lost his temper. There had followed a mild sort of scene; within an hour it had been noised all over the school, so that he knew what the boys and Masters were thinking of when they looked at him. It was then that the revelation of failure came upon him.
But, worst of all, there grew in him wild and ungovernable hates. He hated the Head, he hated Pritchard, he hated Smallwood, he hated, most intensely of all, perhaps, Burton. Burton was too familiar. Not that Speed disliked familiarity; it was rather that in Burton's familiarity he always diagnosed contempt. He wished Burton would leave. He was getting too old.