"What's that?"
"Whether I'm happy ... or not. I always used to say yes, and since that answer has become untrue you've never asked me the question."
"Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue."
"You knew? You knew! Tell me, what did you know? What do you know now?"
She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: "My dear man, I know. I understand you. Haven't you found out that? I know, I've known for a long time that you haven't been happy."
Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost wildly, in his eagerness: "Helen and I—we don't get on well together." Then he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare's eternally calm eyes. "She doesn't understand me—in fact—I don't really think we either of us understand the other."
"No?" she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied: "I think that perhaps explains—chiefly—why I am unhappy. We—Helen and I—we don't know quite what—what to do with each other. Do you know what I mean? We don't exactly quarrel. It's more that we try so hard to be kind that—that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other.... Oh, not actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way.... Oh, Clare, Clare, the truth of it is, I can't bear her, and she can't bear me!"
"Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?"
"Oh, yes, she loves me."
"And you love her?"