Sylvia.
[With suppressed passion.] Then you think that all our efforts and struggles, our pain and sorrow, our aims, are senseless?
John.
Do you remember our going to the Russian ballet before the war? I’ve never forgotten a certain gesture of one of the dancers. It was an attitude she held for an instant, in the air; it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life; you felt it could only have been achieved by infinite labour, and the fact that it was so fleeting, like the shadow of a bird flying over a river, made it all the more wonderful. I’ve often thought of it since, and it has seemed to me a very good symbol of life.
Sylvia.
John, you can’t be serious.
John.
I’ll tell you what I mean. Life seems to me like a huge jig-saw puzzle that doesn’t make any picture, but if we like we can make little patterns, as it were, out of the pieces.
Sylvia.
What is the use of that?