 the wrong, of any kind, he may do. If after the help one has had
from you one can't either take care of one's self or simply hold one's tongue,
one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. It's in the name of
what I do care about that I've tried still to keep hold of you. How can I be
indifferent,« she asked, »to how I appear to you?« And as he found himself
unable immediately to say: »Why, if you're going, need you, after all? Is it
impossible you should stay on - so that one mayn't lose you?«
    »Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?«
    »Not with us, if you object to that, but near enough to us, somewhere, for
us to see you - well,« she beautifully brought out, »when we feel we must. How
shall we not sometimes feel it? I've wanted to see you often when I couldn't,«
she pursued, »all these last weeks. How shan't I then miss you now, with the
sense of your being gone forever?« Then as if the straightness of this appeal,
taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering: »Where is your home
moreover now - what has become of it? I've made a change in your life, I know I
have; I've upset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of - what shall
I call it? - all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of
detestation -« She pulled up short.
    Oh but he wanted to hear. »Detestation of what?«
    »Of everything - of life.«
    »Ah that's too much,« he laughed - »or too little!«
    »Too little, precisely« - she was eager. »What I hate is myself - when I
think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of others, and
that one isn't happy even then. One does it to cheat one's self and to stop
one's mouth - but that's only at the best for a little. The wretched self is
always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is
that it's not, that it's never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The
only safe thing
