"All people who are unhappy are generally very happy, too," she said, "at least they are often very...."
"Gay?" I suggested.
She agreed.
I said I thought he was more than an unhappy person with high spirits, which one saw often enough. He gave me the impression of a person capable of solid happiness, the kind of business-like happiness that comes from a fundamental goodness.
"Yes, he might, be like that," she said, "only one doesn't know quite what his life has been and is."
She meant she knew all too well that his life had not been one in which happiness was possible.
I agreed.
"One knows so little about other people."
"Nothing," I said. "Perhaps he is miserable. He ought to marry. I feel he is very domestic."
"I sometimes think," she said, "that the people who marry—the men I mean—are those who want the help and support of a woman, women are so far stronger and braver than men; and that those who don't marry are sometimes those who are strong enough to face life without this help. Of course, there are others who aren't either strong enough or weak enough to need it, but they don't matter."