'Oh,' she gasped, 'I must, I must, I know I must. But it's difficult …'
I'm not going to repeat the things I said. They were the usual truisms, and one has to say them. I had accepted her story now: it seemed simpler. The complex part of the business was that at one moment I was simply persuading a frightened and reluctant girl to do the straight and decent and difficult thing, and at the next I was wasting words on an egotist (we're all that, after all) who was subconsciously enjoying the situation and wanting to prolong it. One feels the difference always, and it is that duplicity of aim in seekers after advice that occasionally makes one cruel and hard, because it seems the only profitable method.
It must have been ten minutes before I wrung out of her a faltering but definite, 'I'll do it.'
Then I stood up. There was no more time to be wasted.
'What train can you get?' I asked her.
'I don't know…. The 7.30, perhaps.' She rose, too, her little wet crumpled handkerchief still in her hand. I saw she had something else to say.
'I've been so miserable …'
'Well, of course.'
'It's been on my mind so …'
What things people of this type give themselves the trouble of saying!