"There may be women who'd believe you, Larry, or who'd say they believe you; but not me."
"It's the truth," he said. "If you were young and if you were married to me I should have enlisted months ago.
"Can't you see it's not you, it's this life we lead that I'm sick and tired of? I tell you I'd rather be hanged than go on with it. I'd rather be a prisoner in Germany than shut up in this house of yours."
"Poor little house. You used to like it. What's wrong with it now?"
"Everything. Those damned lime-trees all round it. And that damned white wall round the lime-trees. Shutting me in.
"And those curtains in your bed-room. Shutting me in.
"And your mind, trying to shut mine in.
"I come into this room and I find Phyllis Desmond in it and Orde-Jones, drinking tea and talking. I go upstairs for peace, and Michael and Ellis are sitting there--talking; trying to persuade themselves that funk's the divinest thing in God's universe.
"And over there's the one thing I've been looking for all my life--the one thing I've cared for. And you're keeping me from it."
They left it. But it began all over again the next day and the next. And Lawrence went on growing his moustache and trying to train it upwards in the way she hated.