For he was strung up to an abnormal, cruel
sensitiveness. Whatever else they did, people did not laugh at him. He
had never given them the chance that he had given her. He had learnt to
be silent, and now she had made him talk and the result had been an
uncouth failure. He had thrown his hardships at her like a parvenu his
riches. If she did not see through his crudeness to what was real in
him, she could only see that he was a rather funny young man who
swaggered outrageously. And that was not to be endured.
But she did not laugh at all.
"You're sure of yourself, Robert."
"Yes--I am."
"I'm sure of myself, too. Because I'm sure of things outside myself."
He did not try to understand her. He was wrestling with the expression
of his own experiences. He threw out his free hand and turned it and
closed the powerful, slender fingers, as though he were moulding some
invisible substance.
"Outside things are colourless and lifeless--sort of plastic stuff--until
we get hold of them. We twist them to the best shapes we can. Nothing
happens to us that isn't exactly like ourselves. Even what people call
accidents. Even a man's diseases. I've seen that in the Wards. People
die as they live, and they live as they are----"
And now she did laugh, throwing back her head, and he laughed with her,
shyly but not resentfully. It was as though a crisis in their
relationship had been passed. He could trust her to understand.
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