He shook his head, with a shrug.
"One can, you know," said Kitty. "I've been in and out before—more than once. Not so badly, perhaps, but quite badly enough. You too, probably?"
"Yes. Oh, yes," he admitted gloomily. "But it wasn't like this. Neither the circumstances, nor the—the emotion."
Kitty said, "Probably not. Why should it be? Nothing ever is exactly like anything else, luckily.... By the way, when did you begin to take notice of me? Don't worry, if you can't remember."
He thought for a minute, then shook his head.
"I'm bad at these things. Didn't we meet at Prideaux's one night in the spring? I observed you then; I remember you amused me. But I don't think the impression went deep.... Then—oh, we met about a good deal one way and another—and I suppose it grew without my noticing it. And then came that week-end, and that did the trick as far as I was concerned. I knew what I was doing after that, and I tried to stop it, but, as you see, I have failed. This evening I told you, I suppose, under the influence of shock.... I am not sorry. It is worth it, whatever comes of it."
"Nothing can come of it," said Kitty. "Not the least thing at all. Except being friends. And you probably won't want that. Men don't."
"No," he said. "I don't want it at all. But I suppose I must put up with it." He began to laugh, with his suppressed, sardonic laughter, and Kitty laughed too.
"We're fairly hoist with our own petard, aren't we?" he said. "Think of the scandal we might make, if we did what we chose now.... I believe it would be the coup de grâce for the Brains Ministry." He stated a simple fact, without conceit.
"It's a rotten position," he continued moodily. "But there it is.... And you're A, aren't you? You'll have to marry someone, eventually. If only you were B2 or 3—only then you wouldn't be yourself. As it is, it would be criminally immoral of me to stand in your way. The right thing, I suppose, would be for us to clear out of each other's way and give each other a chance to forget. The right thing.... Oh damn it all, I'm as bad as the most muddle-headed fool in the country, who doesn't care that for the right thing if it fights against his individual impulses and desires.... I suppose moralists would say here's my chance to bear my witness, to stand by my own principles and show the world they're real.... They are real, too; that's the mischief of it. I still am sure they matter more than anything else; but just now they bore me. I suppose this is what a moral and law-abiding citizen feels when he falls in love with someone else's wife.... What are you laughing at now?"