"A wild rose, then; and you have no right to want such a life. You are not a flower. You are a human being, and you can't have a sheltered life, or a summer hedgerow life, because you have truth and falsehood in you, and if you will not live for the truth you will die for the falsehood. That is why cinemas are good and theatres are rotten. All the plays are false, because they have forgotten truth and falsehood and are all about being rich or poor, or old or young, or married or unmarried, and in the worst plays of all they are about people pretending to be children so as to get out of the whole thing. I hate you sometimes when you seem to be trying that game of refusing to be grown up, denying your own feelings and letting men love you and pretending you don't know what it is all about." "I never do that," she cried indignantly. "I'm not so sure," he said, unable to resist the temptation to press home the advantage he had won in rousing her out of her placid happiness. "I'm not so sure. There are too many girls do that." "I don't. I may have done it. But I have never done it with you. It is a wicked lie to say anything of the kind." "You can't blame me if I catch at any idea that will help me to understand you." "You never will, if you go grubbing about with your mind." "Oh! my mind is no good, is it? Then take your hands off my feelings. They'll understand you right enough." "No. They won't." "Why not?" "Because they're blind." "Good God! What am I to do, then?" "Wait." "How long?" "Till you can see." "I never shall see more than I do now. If you love me, why don't you love me as I am?" "I do. But you don't know what you are--yet, and you don't know what I am." "I know what I want." "It isn't what I want." "If you knew at all what I wanted, you would want it too." "What is it?" "Love." "You've got it." "You don't call this love?" "I do." "Then I don't. It is just playing the fool--wasting time." "It isn't wasting time. We are much better friends than we were." "I don't want to be friends. I've had enough of friends. They have never done me any good. It's a silly, thin kind of happiness at best." "It is better than no happiness at all, which the other would be." "How can you say that?" he cried, revolted. "How can you say that? Every thought, every dream I have is centred on it. It is such happiness that my imagination, is baffled by it." "Please let us stop talking about it. We are only getting horribly at cross-purposes." He had learned when it was wise to stop, but he needed every now and then the assurance that her serene confidence was shot with doubt. Once or twice when he had tried to thrust her back on her doubts she had flared up, and had fought tooth and nail, declaring that she would never see him again. And, as he knew she meant it, he yielded, and said that any sacrifice was better than that.