The shoulders shake still harder, the sobs are louder, for sympathy is hard to bear in such moments of humiliation—but this too you find out later.
You walk across the room, helplessly, hopelessly. You murmur forth apologies, though 478 you don’t know for what you are apologizing, and words of endearment and of sympathy, though you can’t tell what it is you are sympathetic about. You would do anything, abase yourself to any degree, to stop the noise of sobbing which is slowly sapping your manhood.
You stand looking down on poor Felicia—what is the matter with her? What has happened?
“I don’t believe you can be well, my darling,” you are fool enough to say. Inside you your other self is grumbling:
“Well, I’m hanged if I understand women!”
If only she would stop; she must have been crying ten minutes, and you have aged years. If only you understood why, how much easier it would be! The only thing you do understand is that whatever you say and whatever you do, or whether it’s sympathy or silence, it’s wrong.
There is a knock on the door.
“Dinner is served,” says a voice, and you (feeling like a quitter, but you can’t stand the sight of her any longer) say:
“Felicia, I’m going down. I don’t seem to be doing you any good——”
Felicia raises her head.