"Well, you know, that's the sensible thing to do. You have to shut it out."
"But supposing you can't?"
He met the misery of her eyes, her voice, with a gravity that he seldom showed to any one.
"We all have to go through that phase," he said curtly. "A kind of despair. It comes—and passes, generally."
"Does it? Does it pass?"
"I think it does.... You see, it's natural. It comes to us at the end of youth—it's the end of some things—then we have to take stock, see what we've spent, what we've got left to go on with—"
"And supposing we've spent everything?"
"Well, that isn't likely—though it may look so. Most of us go through a kind of bankruptcy. The hopes and ambitions of youth are gone—our dreams are gone, as a rule. We face what we've actually done, what we're really capable of—it doesn't correspond to what we believed we could do, what we thought we were. The reality is hard, and we despair.... But then, we get our second wind, so to speak, and go on, somehow."
"Do we? But why? Why go on—"
"Well, most of us by that time have certain ties, responsibilities, we're necessary, or think we are—"