"But if we don't think we are? If we're not needed?"
Her lips quivered, her tone was hard and desperate.
"Well, then—there may be some work we're interested in. Or if not that, there's a good deal of pleasure to be got out of life, you know, if one understands how to do it."
"Pleasure?"
"Yes, surely.... Youth doesn't appreciate the good things of life, it's too eager, too intent on its own purposes.... The real pleasures of the mind and the senses come later—they're the consolation for what we were speaking of."
"No, no! That's no consolation! It's impossible to live that way!"
"You want to keep your youth," he said. "I think you're suffering from youth unlived."
"Youth unlived!" she repeated, in a low voice. "I didn't have it ... it went by me somehow—"
"Yes, and now you want it."
"I don't want anything!"