“It's different.”
“It's not being certain?”
“Not the way it was at first—but, Ollie, we're neither of us the same—”
“Then you aren't sure?”
“I can't—I haven't—oh, Ollie, I don't know, I don't know!”
“That means you know.”
Again the kiss but this time their lips only hurt against each other—Oliver feels for a ghastly instant as if he were kissing Nancy after she had died. It seems to him that everything in him has made itself into a question as discordant and unanswered as the tearing cry of a puppy baying the moon, struck out of his senses by that swimming round silver above him, ineffably lustrous, ineffably removed, none of it ever coming to touch him but light too pale to help at all. He is holding a girl in his arms—he can feel her body against him—but it is not Nancy he is holding—it never will be Nancy any more. He releases her and starts walking up and down in a series of short, uneasy strides, turning mechanically to keep out of the way of chairs. Words come out of him, words he never imagined he could ever say, he thinks dizzily that it would feel like this if he were invisibly bleeding to death—that would come the same way in fiery spurts and pauses that tore at the body.
“Don't you see, dear, don't you see? It's been eight months now and we aren't any nearer getting married than we were at first and it isn't honest to say we will be soon any more—I can't see any prospect—I've failed in everything I thought would go—and we can't get married on my job for years—I'm not good enough at it—and I won't have you hurt—I won't have you tied to me when it only means neither of us doing what we want and both of us getting, older and our work not done. Oh, I love you, Nancy—if there was any hope at all I'd go down on my knees to ask you to keep on but there isn't—they've beaten us—they've beaten us—all the fat old people who told us we were too poor and too young. All we do is go on like this both of us getting worked up whenever we see each other and both of us hurting each other and nothing happening—Oh, Nancy, I thought we could help each other always and now we can't even [Illustration: AND THEN THE QUEER MAN HAD GONE OUT OF THE DOOR] a little any more. You remember when we promised that if either of us stopping loving each other we'd tell?”
Nancy is very silent and rather white.
“Yes, Ollie.”