"I'm sorry, Mary. You seem to be talking about something, but I haven't the faintest notion what it is. But you can make yourself believe anything you like if you keep on long enough."
"No. Half the time I'm doing it I don't believe it'll come off…. But it always does. Every time it's the same. Every time; exactly as if something had happened."
"Poor Mary."
"But, Richard, it makes you absolutely happy. That's the queer part of it. It's how you know."
"Know what?"
He was angry.
"That there's something there. That it's absolutely real."
"Real?"
"Why not? If it makes you happy without the thing you care most for in the whole world…. There must be something there. It must be real. Real in a way that nothing else is."
"You aren't happy now," he said.